


Incurable

by susiecarter



Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, DC Extended Universe
Genre: Angry Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bad Decisions, Comes Back Wrong, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-13 12:58:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11760390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/susiecarter/pseuds/susiecarter
Summary: Clark comes back a little bit wrong—or maybe more than a little bit. He poses a danger to anybody close to him, in more than one way. There's only one person he can think of who's learned enough about Kryptonian biology to help him and isn't currently in prison; and Wayne owes him, anyway. At least he won't have to feel guilty about lashing out anymore, if he's doing it at the guy who tried to kill him.Except "lashing out" doesn't really cover it, after a while—and maybe Wayne's in over his head just as far as Clark is.





	Incurable

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thedevilchicken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/gifts).



> I can't even tell you how thrilled I was about this assignment, thedevilchicken! I took your prompts about Clark coming back wrong post-BvS, struggling with trauma and going to Bruce for help, rough sex facilitated by kryptonite, and sex without feelings except then feelings, and mashed them all together plus or minus about half your likes list—I can only hope the result is anywhere near as much fun to read as it was to write. ;D Thank you so much for your wonderfully detailed request and letter, and, uh, sorry (a little bit) for the length! (And also for the Dubious Comics Science. And Dubious Comics Crime. And—well. You get the idea. *handwaves* :D)
> 
> **ETA:** Now available [here](https://ficbook.net/readfic/6086302) in Russian, thanks to the hard work of the incomparable [belalex](https://ficbook.net/authors/787697)!

 

 

> The fiercest anger of all, the most incurable, is that which rages in the place of dearest love.
> 
> — _Medea_ , Euripides

 

 

 

There's something wrong with him.

That's the first thing he can remember thinking, afterward: there's something wrong with him. He doesn't know where he is, and he doesn't remember how he got there, and he isn't sure what's happening. But he's certain, in the very first instant he wakes, that there's something wrong with him.

And then he realizes he can't see. Sudden, wild, reflexive, he reaches out and misgauges the distance, slams his hands into a wall—a board? He can't move forward, can't back away—he's _closed in_ , and he doesn't think it in so many words as much as he is suddenly, terribly aware of it. He's trapped, he's—he's _trapped_ , and he can't move or think or breathe for knowing it—

Light explodes. His whole field of vision blazes up, white and electric—and he feels it, too, sudden hot brillance crackling out of him, _through_ him, sharp-edged and blistering; his eyes are squeezed shut but it doesn't block out the light, and somewhere far away he thinks he can hear someone screaming—

And then, after forever—after half a second—it stops. He lies there and listens to his own shuddering breaths, and waits until he doesn't feel like moving will shake him apart. And then he rolls carefully over, and crawls, an inch at a time, up out of the great blackened hole he's in.

He has to concentrate on his arms, his legs, on where they are and which one is changing position, on holding the others still. He doesn't think to wonder what changed, why everything is blasted and smoking now, why the dirt is so hot and dark against his skin. It's not important, not next to the overwhelming task of picking up one hand and setting it down again in a different spot. He blinks grit, dust, an occasional drifting spark out of his eyes; he smells ozone, tastes ash. But that's not important either. He just—he just needs to get out of the hole.

By the time his fingers find grass, they're hardly trembling at all anymore. That's good. Right?

He drags himself a little higher. There's—there's something there, besides just grass. Cool, gray, smooth: stone. Slanted at a strange angle, but he feels his way haltingly along it, puts a little weight on it, and it doesn't shift or slide out from under him.

His legs feel wrong. All of him feels wrong, he's—he's too heavy, unsteady. Has he always been that way? Or had he been stronger, once—lighter?

It doesn't matter. He can't stay here. He doesn't know where this is, doesn't recognize it. Does he? He feels like he can't think about it long enough to tell, nothing in his head but wordless impressions. Gray stones and dirt, grass, fields—and fields are good, familiar. Fields are—

(all around the farmhouse, the barn, stretching away gold into the distance. He'd stared out at them in the evening, stuck at the table doing his homework; he'd looked down at them from the roof, when he'd jumped up there because he couldn't stand to hear one more lecture from Dad about being careful; he'd run through them, run and run and _run_ , because he was pretty sure he could fly but he knew he wasn't supposed to, and even touching the ground he could go _so fast_ if he tried)

—something he knows. He's sure of it.

So he pushes himself up off the stone, and lurches toward the fields.

It takes a long time to get to them. The sky is gray, the fields are brown, and both of them seem endless. He walks and can't remember why he's doing it—where is he going? Why is he trying to get there? But if he stops he doesn't think he'll be able to start again, and he wants to—

No, wait, that's right. The hole. He wanted to get out of the hole, wanted to get away from it. Is it still there? He doesn't know. Turning around is too much to ask. The sky, the fields, are so big. If he turns around, he'll get lost. He'll lose himself.

He walks.

He stumbles, sometimes. Falls down, the impact jarring, shuddering through his bones—has it always felt like that, to fall? He doesn't know. He catches his breath, in harsh little gasps, and then drags himself back up.

Everything stays the same. The sky, the fields, the endlessness; the way he feels, how hard he has to concentrate just to move, how strange and slow and distant it all is.

But then something changes.

It takes a moment for him to figure out what, because it's not him, or the sky, or the fields. It's something else, a—a _sound_ , that's what it is.

A sound and it's behind him, and for an instant he feels dizzy, sick, terrified: chasing him, coming for him, to drag him back down—

"Clark!" someone gasps, and then something is touching him—hands, it's—it's Mom, he thinks, with sudden clarity.

"Mom," he says, and then she's in front of him, right there, arms warm around his shoulders, face wet against his neck, laughing or crying or maybe both, trying to say something through it that he can't quite understand. "Mom—"

"—coming to see you," he hears, only a little muffled, "and then I saw the ground, and you—oh, _Clark_ , Clark—"

She's there and alive, and she's—she's so happy to see him, he thinks distantly. That's important to him. Isn't it? Doesn't that mean something? He should be glad.

But he's not. She's touching him and he hates it. His skin is crawling, and he doesn't know why. He feels pressed by it, pressured, suffocated, like he needs to get away. He wants to _hit_ her—

_No_ , Clark thinks, horrified. Except he isn't horrified, he just knows he should be—all he can feel inside himself is a hot crawling anger, bright and sharp-edged, boiling over.

"Mom," he says, " _Mom_ ," and something in his tone must be enough to warn her. She breaks away from him, and he catches a glimpse of her startled eyes and wary face, but it's not far enough, it's— "Sorry," he gasps out, shoving at her and stumbling away. There's definitely something wrong with him, he has time to think, right before everything goes white again.

And this time, he's awake. This time, he has his eyes open. He can tell that it's coming from him. That prickling crackle across his skin, that terrible brilliant electricity screaming out of him in ragged ugly arcs—white, white, blazing white, except at the very furthest edges where it dims to a grim and bloody red. He can't make it stop, can't do anything except let it tear through him. Are his feet still touching the ground? He can't be sure—

He blinks and it's gone. He's kneeling in the dirt. Dirt, because the grass has been blasted away. He's curled in on himself, gasping, in the middle of a roughly-drawn circle of blighted, smoking ground.

And Mom—

He jerks his head up, suddenly terrified. But she's still there, she's fine. Down on her knees, where she must have landed after he shoved her, with her arms still half-raised defensively—and she's staring at him over them, eyes wide.

She doesn't look afraid. Clark searches for some sign of it, heart in his throat, and can't find any; she's startled, upset, worried, but not afraid. And somehow that makes him angry, too. She should know better, she—she should be able to tell he isn't himself. Not just the lightning, or whatever it is, but on the inside. She should be able to tell there's something wrong with him.

He squeezes his eyes shut and puts one hand over them. The heel of his palm smells like cinders, and even though everything else is wrong, that almost seems right. Nothing is how it's supposed to be, it's—it's all burned down.

"Clark," Mom is saying softly. "Clark, sweetheart—come on, it's all right."

"No—"

"Come on back to the house with me. Here you go, come on," and what else can he do? She's next to him again, she's put her arm around him—he staggers up, trying not to lean on her, but it's Mom: she gets a good grip on his waist and takes as much weight as she can. "That's right. It's all right, honey, everything's going to be okay—"

But it's not, Clark thinks. It's not.

 

 

*

 

 

They make it back to the house. Slowly, painfully, but they do it. Mom gets Clark inside, eases him down onto the couch, and then hurries away again. She's talking to him as she does it, raising her voice as she moves off into the kitchen, but he can't hear it, can't make it make sense. It's all wrong, it's—it's not how it's supposed to be.

He sleeps. He wakes up. It isn't any better.

Or, well. He feels stronger, and he doesn't have as much trouble standing up, keeping his eyes open, that kind of thing. But the rest of it is—he's restless and exhausted at the same time, doesn't want to leave the house but can't hold still. Mom's so glad he's back at all; she isn't paying attention, he thinks, with a vague bitter frustration he can't quite shake. She's always smiling—and crying a little, too, sometimes. Smiling and crying a little and touching him, hugging him, like she doesn't even realize how stifling it is, how twig-snap close he is to gritting his teeth and shoving her away.

He sleeps. He wakes up. It isn't any better.

He tries to imagine what normal should look like, tries his best to hold the ideal in his head and mimic it—and it should be easy enough, shouldn't it? Story of his life. He's been practicing as long as he can remember, the form without the substance, seeming normal without ever being it. He's got it down to an art. Or he _had_ it down to an art, anyway. He's never struggled with it this much before. Even when he was a kid, even when he didn't know what was happening or why, it hadn't been this difficult, because—

Because back then he'd only been scared. And now all he is is angry.

It's a deep slow simmer in the mornings; banked overnight, never quite smothered, dim and smoldering. Everything around him keeps on being wrong, and the more he moves or speaks or _thinks_ , the worse it gets. Bright, loud, close: too much, and—and if he just could get away from it all

(—from _what?_ It's the farmhouse, it's Smallville, there isn't a neighbor in any direction for at least a mile or two. There's nobody there but him and Mom, how can he possibly say—)

and have some _quiet_ , somewhere dark and still and—and _peaceful_ , without

(—a breeze in the grass outside? Mom humming in the kitchen? The sound of his own footsteps on the floor, his own heart, his own breathing? As if there were anywhere on Earth quieter than—)

anybody in his _face_ all the time, he'd be fine.

Which is approximately what he shouts into Mom's face, when he can't hold it in anymore.

She watches him quietly until he's done, arms crossed, mouth flat. And then she says, "Clark, honey, that's the most you've said to me in three days."

Clark stares at her. That can't be true. Can it?

She stays just as she is for a long moment. And then her brow crumples a little, her eyes going wet, and she says, "I—I wasn't prepared for this, sweetheart. For you to just up and come on back out of the ground, and—I'm trying as hard as I can to do what's right for you, I always have—"

Clark jerks back, squeezes his eyes shut: she always has, because she's always had to. Because of him, because of what he is. Mom never could have been prepared for any of it—she and Dad always had to feel their way, figure it out as they went along, because there wasn't anybody else to tell them. There wasn't anybody else who'd ever been stuck raising an alien—

"—and— _no_ ," Mom says with sudden sharpness, and Clark's still not looking but he can feel her hands settle on his elbows, her grip firm and steady. "Whatever it is you're thinking: no, that's not it. I love it, I love _you_ , I'd never have it any other way."

Clark sucks in a ragged breath, and then leans in to press his forehead to her temple. "Me too, Mom," he says, half into her hair.

"I just don't know what to do for you, sweetheart," she murmurs, sounding almost lost. "I don't know what will help you, and I—I don't think I can figure it out if you won't talk to me. I don't think I'll ever figure it out unless—"

"I can't stand it," Clark whispers, and Mom goes still. "I _can't stand it_. I was—I remember—"

(— _I died, it hurt_ — _it hurt so much, Ma, I killed that thing and I killed myself and it **hurt** and I'm not okay, I don't know if I'm ever going to be okay_ —)

He's spent three days trapped in his own head, consumed with the effort of trying not to touch it, not to think about it. He can't say it. He _can't_.

He curls in on himself with a sudden strange tension, gasping, wondering distantly what exactly it is that's trying to work its way out of him—a lot of wild sobbing, maybe? Another round of screaming at Mom over nothing? She's clutching his shoulders, asking him desperately what's wrong, what's happening, from what sounds like really far away.

Except it's not far away at all. And it should be.

He realizes it and pushes her away at almost the same moment, twists himself to one side and hopes it's good enough. The light hits like a blow—at least as bad as last time. Maybe worse. He grits his teeth and rides it out, lightning tearing out of him in a crude circle, keen and scorching.

When it's through, he's on the floor. He turns himself over slowly, aching with leftover tension, and drags in a breath—and then he's blinking up at a ceiling.

The wrong ceiling. The upstairs ceiling, through the hole that's been torn into the floor.

A little more smoke, a little blackened around the edges. But it looks almost like it did when the pickup truck went through it, Clark thinks dimly. Like—

Like the last time Kryptonians destroyed it.

"Clark," Mom gasps, and Clark forces himself up onto one elbow and throws out a hand before she can rush toward him.

" _No_ ," he says. "Don't—don't come near me."

"Clark—"

"Please! Please, Mom, don't. I'm—I don't want to—" _hurt you_ , except he already is: he can see it on her face, the wetness in her eyes and the tension in her jaw, the way she wraps her hands around each other so they won't shake. "There's something wrong with me. Look at this, this isn't—there's something wrong with me. Talking can't fix this."

"But what can we—"

" _We_ aren't going to do anything," Clark says, one hand still out to keep her away, pressing the back of the other over his eyes. "This isn't safe for you, Mom. I can't stay here, I _can't_. I have to go. I have to. I have to go get help—"

"From who?" Mom says quietly. "Swanwick? Who?"

"I don't know!" Clark shouts. "I don't know, somebody who—who knows about me, about Kryptonians; who knows how we work, how to stop us—"

"Well, Luthor's in prison," Mom says with sudden sharpness, her face gone grim, "so I don't think we'll be calling him. Clark, honey, please just wait, just think about this—"

But Clark doesn't have to think about it, because the answer's suddenly obvious. "Not Luthor," he tells Mom. "Someone else."

 

 

* * *

 

 

Bruce gazes out across the lake, and pours himself another drink without looking.

For a moment, he almost can't remember what it will be. Scotch? No, that's right, he polished off the last of the scotch the other day. Whiskey, then.

He swirls the tumbler gently, listens to the ice clink, and takes a sip. The chill and the burn are both so wonderfully appropriate. Like revisiting the day itself in microcosm, in reverse, as though almost to rewind it: the way it had really happened, the fire had come first. All that flame, and then—

And then all that ice. It had been cold, blustery, the day they'd buried Kent.

Alfred disapproves of Bruce's new evening routine, of course. But anticipating it, knowing it's there at the end of the day waiting for him, allows Bruce to function adequately the rest of the time. And if experience is any guide, it won't be necessary forever. He won't recover, as such, but he'll—he'll crawl his way out of the hole, in time. More easily than with Jason, even, because he hasn't lost his sense of purpose but rediscovered it; because Kent was a stranger, because however terrible his death it simply could not have the same capacity to break Bruce's heart; because he knows what he's doing this time. A broken limb, and, clear-eyed, Bruce has chosen alcohol for a crutch. Six to eight weeks and he'll safely discard it, a little the worse for wear but functional.

Functional. That's always the goal.

Besides, in its own way it's calming. Almost meditative. To sit on the roof like this, the lake a mirror for the darkening sky, and take the time to taste each individual sip of anaesthetic—self-punishment—both—as it goes down.

Bruce draws a slow breath and swirls the tumbler idly again. There's even a breeze rising. He can feel it against his face, ruffling through his hair, against his forearms where his sleeves have been rolled up.

How dramatically apropos, he has time to think—and then it's no longer a breeze but a blast, and he raises an arm defensively against whatever's hurtling toward him out of the sky and realizes belatedly that the tumbler is still in his hand.

Not that it matters: he recognizes Clark Kent even through a double layer of handblown glass. He lowers the tumbler and eases his free hand into his pocket to disable the dozen alarms that have just gone off inside the house, and he hasn't drunk nearly enough to slow the process of cataloging the full range of possibilities. A trick; a joke; an assault; divine justice. Clark Kent raised from the dead, granted a chance at revenge—

"I need your help," Kent bites out.

Bruce blinks at him, and absently swirls the tumbler once more. In that first crystalline moment of comprehension, of understanding just what it was he was seeing, he had taken a superficial accounting of Kent's features: the hair, the height, the breadth, those eyes. But a second look throws red flags. Kent looks pinched, harried—tired. His face is drawn, pale; his mouth flat and unhappy; the shoulders bowed as though beneath some immense weight. He's not wearing the suit he was buried in, but he's not wearing the Kryptonian uniform either—he came back to life and had time to change clothes, and then ... what? Didn't think to switch to the uniform before flying here? Recklessness.

Or urgency.

"My help," Bruce repeats thoughtfully, and raises the tumbler to take a sip he can't taste.

And Kent doesn't seem to be thinking clearly, doesn't appear to have considered what all this looks like to Bruce—that until fifteen seconds ago, Bruce had thought he was dead. At the fundraiser, Kent had been willing to argue, to press his case; in a dark alleyway, Superman had been willing to talk Batman down, until Bruce had hit him one time too many for even superhuman patience to bear. But this Kent—

This Kent is straight out of a dream, stalking across the dark roof with a look on his face that Bruce recognizes from a bleak rocky corridor. Bruce feels a distant sort of surprise that there's no cape snapping in his wake, that his eyes aren't simmering fire.

He fists a hand in the front of Bruce's shirt, a button cracking between his fingers—for a moment Bruce had expected it to be a rib instead. Or maybe his sternum. "You _owe_ me," Kent grinds out. "You owe me, you can't—"

"That wasn't a no," Bruce says blandly.

Kent stares at him, gaze flat, face grim; Christ, Bruce finds himself thinking, what the hell's _happened_ to Kent? Bruce still remembers the moment he'd realized that he had been, against all odds, forgiven: that Kent would push himself up off the ground where Bruce had been ready to cut his throat, and fight Doomsday at Bruce's shoulder. Kent had let all animosity go the instant he'd been given an excuse to do it, had focused with no visible reluctance on their new shared objective—Bruce had been impressed by it at the time, had thought to himself that working alongside Superman might be easier than he'd ever expected, if Superman was _that_ capable of setting emotion aside to concentrate on what mattered most.

But now Kent isn't letting go. If anything, his grip has tightened. Bruce hears that unlucky button crunch still further, and then Kent gets a hand around his arm, and—Kent had been so _careful_ every time Bruce had seen him interact with humans, but there's no way Bruce is going to get out of this without bruises in the shape of those fingers. Bruce's heart hammers unhelpfully against his ribs. Kent's eyes still haven't gone red, so perhaps he won't vaporize Bruce's head after all. But his mouth is carving itself a new shape, almost a sneer—all the spite and anger Bruce had expected to see on Superman's face and had never found—

"Shit," Kent breathes, and all at once his gaze turns inward. Bruce is released abruptly, whiskey sloshing out of the tumbler to prickle its way across his hand, and Kent has covered his face and is stumbling backward across the roof of the lake house. "Shit—"

"Kent," Bruce says, barely remembering to set the tumbler down at last before he hurries to catch up.

"Don't!" Kent yells, throwing an arm out, and Bruce sees something that surely can't be fear flash across his face. "Don't—don't touch me! Get back, get _back_ —"

For a moment, Bruce can't make sense out of it: the light is brilliant, blinding, and—did Kent _explode_? Can Kryptonians go nuclear? What the _fuck_ —and then he hears the sharp electric crackle, lowers the arm he'd thrown up to shield his eyes, and understands. Lightning. It's crawling across Kent's skin like he's an inside-out plasma globe, bursting out of him to strike against the roof in blazing irregular curves, forking and shivering, the whole house trembling with it under Bruce's feet. In his pocket, his phone is buzzing in bursts—a straight flush of alarms, because no doubt the electrical system in the house, the Cave, is going wild—

Kent is screaming. Bruce darts forward and a flare of red-white light sizzles toward him, the air torn with a low rippling approximation of thunder, the hair on his arms and the back of his neck rising in warning—but he can't just stand here while Kent burns up in front of him. He _can't_.

Except that isn't what happens. Another achingly long handful of seconds, and it's over; Kent's suspended for an instant, smoking faintly, over the roof. And then he drops with a sigh, folding over on himself, and Bruce is across the roof in time to catch him.

"Don't touch me," Kent murmurs tiredly, as if he doesn't realize he's leaning into Bruce's arms.

"Well," Bruce hears himself say. "I believe I understand why you're concerned, Mr. Kent. I think you'd better come inside."

 

 

*

 

 

Kent tries to put up a fight, because of course he does. But he'd come to Bruce for a reason, and they both know what that reason is.

Bruce had been well aware that there was no predicting the outcome of his altercation with Superman. Even if Luthor's research methodology and results could be trusted, he'd been working with dead tissue; and Bruce hadn't had a clear enough picture of Kryptonian biology to be confident in his understanding of what might constitute a fatal wound. Bipedal vertebrates certainly were _unlikely_ to fare well with severed spinal cords, and any serious injury to the central nervous system should at the very least have incapacitated Superman. But there was no way to be sure except to try it, and—

And even a one percent chance of a disastrous outcome needed to be treated like a certainty.

So Bruce had prepared. Not all the kryptonite he'd liberated from Luthor's clutches had gone into the spear. If Superman could not be killed, perhaps he could at least be _held_ , secured; perhaps he could be diminished and then restrained. At the time, the thought had held a certain bleak appeal: Superman locked away, and Bruce, his jailer, in a sense chained up right beside him; one forever bound and the other forever vigilant, a sentence they would serve together to its end—

Afterward, he hadn't destroyed the room. He'd thought about it. Of course he had. But he couldn't be certain there wouldn't be a need for it, under other circumstances.

Like these.

(It doesn't look the way it once had. Bruce had built it in the grip of a grim, dark sort of urgency. Whatever care had been taken in its construction had gone into the calculation of precisely how much kryptonite it would take to do the job, how best to mix and distribute it. The room itself had looked like what it was: a cell. Cold, dark, unfurnished. Bare concrete. And then—

Then Kent had died, and Bruce hadn't destroyed it. Had, belatedly, fruitlessly, redone the interior, as if in helpless abstracted apology; as if he could likewise revisit and amend his own intentions in building it. Pointless, wasteful, and of course he could not conceal the rush of activity from Alfred, which had added a certain self-conscious piquancy to the whole operation.

But Alfred hadn't stopped him. And he hadn't been able to stop himself.)

And Kent has come to him because he knows. He's well aware of what Bruce must have done, how much Bruce had to learn, what Bruce had taken from Luthor and why. He knows better than anyone precisely what sort of man Bruce is. In a sense it's almost a relief. There's no ugliness left to conceal, not from Kent. He has no illusions left about Bruce.

So there's no need to be coy about any of it. "I can accommodate you," Bruce tells him. "There's no need for concern, Mr. Kent. I guarantee you won't damage the house." And Kent understands what he means; the bitterly amused twitch at the corner of his mouth says as much.

But for all that Kent does know about Bruce, there are still a few surprises left for him.

He must have been able to hear Alfred's heart, his footsteps, from the roof. He isn't startled to see Alfred waiting for them at the door.

But the first thing Alfred says is, "Sir, how many times must I tell you to _warn me_ before conducting experiments involving the electrical—good lord," and Bruce can see Kent's eyebrows jump.

"Alfred," Bruce says, "Mr. Kent will be staying here with us for a time."

"I see," Alfred says crisply. "And will you be raising anyone else from the dead today?"

Kent makes a soft startled sound that he tries belatedly to turn into a cough. "It wasn't him," Kent says. "Me, or—or the lights. Sorry about that."

"No need to apologize, Mr. Kent," Alfred says to him warmly, and Kent blinks at him and then offers up a small uncertain smile. "The fuse box has dealt with worse, I assure you. Please, come in."

"Thank you," Kent says quietly; and the reminder that he's staying, the reason for it, wipes all traces of humor from his face.

But for a moment he was almost happy, Bruce thinks. At least there's one person in this house who might be of some comfort to him.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Clark had known there was something odd about the house.

He hadn't wasted any time. He'd explained in a rush to Mom, already halfway out the door, and then he'd just taken off—there wasn't any reason to wait, was there? He needed to _fix_ this, needed to make sure he couldn't hurt Mom or cause any more damage, and he finally had a reason to think he could.

So he'd launched himself into the air, and it had worked. He knew the way to Metropolis perfectly well, and he'd looked up Wayne's properties and holdings in the area after Luthor's fundraiser. It hadn't been hard to open up and listen for Wayne, to figure out which one he was actually in—or on, as it had turned out.

And listening like that had made it easy to tell that Wayne's lake house wasn't exactly what it seemed. Another time, with somebody else, Clark would have made an effort to respect the veneer of privacy he usually tried to give people. But this was Wayne—Wayne, who'd piggybacked off Luthor's schemes, who hadn't wanted anybody else to murder Clark before he could do it himself; who for all Clark knew might have gone ahead and done it if Mom's name had been Moira or Marybeth, if Clark hadn't given him half a second's pause gasping out _Martha_. Wayne, who was only alive because Clark had died. Wayne, who goddamn well _owed_ Clark—and Clark, thinking this, had let his senses invade Wayne's space, every nook and cranny, with a hot self-righteous satisfaction. It was justified. It was hardly anything Wayne didn't deserve.

So he's not really surprised, when he follows Wayne down below the floor and it all just keeps going. And going, and going, and going.

Okay, maybe he's a little surprised. Jesus. Wayne really does have a lot of money, if he can build down into the ground like this on a whim.

He can feel the room—the _accommodation_ —Wayne has set up well before they get to it. Just a tingle, at first. But it's persistent and only gets stronger as they keep going, sharpening into a prickle, the occasional spike of something that isn't quite pain, not yet.

And Clark's expecting it to get worse, but it doesn't. He feels heavy again, unsteady on his feet, with what he now recognizes is the sensation of strength and speed and flight seeping away from him. But the fizz of kryptonite stops just short of real discomfort.

"Here we are," Wayne says breezily, and opens a door that looks like some sort of reinforced secret vault hatch on the outside, and—

And incongruously normal on the inside. Wayne natters on pointlessly about the kryptonite embedded in the walls, whatever amount it was split into portions of such-and-so-many micrograms. Clark lets the words flow over him and just looks around instead.

It's—it's nice. Surprisingly so. There's a bed, generous and king-sized, neatly made. A desk, a chair, lights—and shelves, full of books.

"No TV, I'm afraid," Wayne is saying, almost apologetic. "The furniture is reinforced and damage-resistant, and if you set the books on fire—" He shrugs offhandedly. "I can buy you more."

"Yeah, I remember," Clark mutters. "You support books."

"I do," Wayne agrees mildly, and then smiles. "I'd like you to be as comfortable as possible. I'm not an animal, Mr. Kent—I just dress up like one in my spare time."

Clark can't help barking out a laugh at that. He steps inside and then sets his hand against the wall, just to test: it doesn't give way, doesn't crumble under his fingers, even though he presses them into it until they ache. The chair is the same way, when he takes the back in his hands and pushes down—it doesn't crack. It doesn't even bend.

"As I said," Wayne murmurs. "You won't damage the house, Mr. Kent. And I assume you're capable of taking the care necessary not to damage yourself."

Clark looks away. "Most days," he says.

A beat of silence, and then Wayne steps out and closes the door behind him. Clark folds his hands around the back of the chair and lets out a long slow breath.

Underneath that kryptonite jitter, he's—he's almost disappointed. Wayne had hated Superman, had wanted him dead. Clark had figured he'd be ready to throw Clark in a hole and throw away the key.

And there's a part of Clark that wanted that. Mom had been Mom, careful with him even when she shouldn't have been because she loved him; she'd never have hurt him in a million years, not even if he deserved it. But Wayne—Wayne, he'd thought, would treat him the way he felt. Wayne would treat him like something dark and angry and ugly. And somehow, weirdly, that would've made it all right to _be_ —

Clark swallows and tightens his grip on the chair, feels the way his muscles shake with the effort, and closes his eyes. Mom had been in danger. But Wayne won't be. Wayne knows to keep his distance, that Clark can't be trusted. He's not up on charges and he's not going to pin Clark to a lab table and cut him open. Probably.

He's the only option. That's all that matters.

 

 

*

 

 

The selection of books is actually pretty broad—a lot of pristine display-stand bestsellers, which Clark figures is only to be expected from Bruce Wayne, but plenty of classics, too, and nonfiction, memoirs, biographies. Even half a shelf of dusty science fiction.

Clark eyes it, but it feels like it might hit a little close to home. He tries the nonfiction instead, picks out a travelogue with a selection of panoramic photographs from the Gobi Desert, and it feels like barely any time at all before it's turned into a dream of—of dust. Dust and sand and shadow, the scrape of rock underneath his feet—striding purposefully through air that ripples with heat, with the slow unstoppable simmer of his own rage—

A blast of light that's white-hot, fading at the edges to red, and then he's awake but it's still there: the lightning, again, clawing its way free of him like it wants to rattle him apart. But he remembers where he is, and he thinks that makes it easier. He doesn't have to worry about damaging anything, about Mom or the house or hurting anyone. He can just let it break and roll through him, without feeling like he needs to make it stop.

When it's over, he lies there and catches his breath and then falls asleep again, and this time he doesn't remember dreaming anything at all.

He wakes up for real in the morning—or at least it's morning according to the clock on the desk, and Wayne probably isn't experimenting on him psychologically. Probably. He picks up the book again but isn't really reading it. He walks through the memory instead, preparing himself to tell Wayne all about it. Mom hadn't been talking about Wayne at the time, but her words still apply: Wayne might not be able to fix this if Clark won't talk to him about it.

He probably should have realized Wayne would never rely on such a subjective measure.

Wayne comes in with a tray about half an hour after Clark wakes up, and the first words out of his mouth are, "Well done, Mr. Kent. I'm sure you'll be glad to hear that we were able to collect a significant amount of data during last night's—event."

Clark blinks at him for a second, and then catches up. "Right, right, of course. Sensors in the walls?"

"And floor, and ceiling," Wayne adds blithely. "And cameras." He pauses for a second, turns with a deliberate air to set the breakfast tray down on the desk. "The kryptonite affects your vision, too, then."

Wayne already tried to kill him once. What could he do with any information Clark gives him now that'll be any worse? "Yeah," Clark says. "I might have been able to see them in the walls from upstairs, I guess. Especially if they're set into the walls outside the kryptonite. Inside—I don't know."

"Hmm," Wayne says. "A question for another time, perhaps." He's not smiling; but his expression is placid, unruffled, his tone bland. Taken as a whole, it's a well-done impression of easygoing, inoffensive calm. Pretty far cry from Wayne at the fundraiser, _freaks dressed like clowns_ —or Batman glaring out of that metal suit with blue-white eyes, for that matter. "Right now, however, there are a few other things I'd like to ask you. If that's all right, Mr. Kent."

Clark looks at the tray instead of at Wayne, but can't quite convince himself he feels hungry. "Sure," he says flatly.

"When did it start?" Wayne says.

Clark walks him through the progression, that dim first memory of waking in the dark and blasting everything away from himself, and then the field, the house, the roof. Wayne lobs him a few softballs as follow-up, how long they last and how it feels to Clark himself, whether he's more or less tired afterward, whether he can tell when they're coming. All pretty reasonable things to ask, but—

But he doesn't get it either, Clark thinks, increasingly frustrated. Clark was wrong: he can't see it any better than Mom can, after all.

Wayne's halfway through assuring Clark his next question will be the last when Clark can't stand it anymore.

"Aren't you going to ask about anything else?"

Wayne's expression doesn't change, but the rest of his body goes still. He stops tapping his fingers idly against the back of the chair, settles his weight in a stance that suddenly looks prepared for something instead of shifting it from foot to foot. "Is there something else you'd like to tell me about?"

And it's not that Clark's going to _like_ telling him, but—but there's something about all this that makes talking feel a little easier. With everything so deliberate and clinical, Wayne standing here eyeing Clark in a room full of cameras and sensors, and not— _caring_ about it, detached scientific curiosity instead of Mom's quiet pain, it's—

Clark can't _hurt_ Wayne, is the thing. However angry he gets, however sick and petty and frustrated he might be and however much he lashes out, none of it will stick to Wayne. Wayne already thinks of him as a barely-averted threat, some frightening alien thing that needs containment. He was willing to stop Clark before, by any means necessary—and there's no reason to think that's changed, not now that Clark really is dangerous, uncontrollable.

(Which is important. If whatever this is can't be—can't be stopped, fixed—

Wayne will take care of it. Wayne won't let him out of here unless it really is safe to. And if it won't ever be safe, Wayne will do whatever's necessary.)

And he says as much. He says it all. He talks until he runs out of words, every ugly venomous feeling he's had since he came back. And he could never have unleashed it all at Mom. But Wayne just listens, expressionless, while his hidden cameras log it all away from half a dozen angles.

"I appreciate your willingness to elaborate, Mr. Kent," he says quietly, when Clark finally falls silent. And then he inclines his head and goes.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Bruce walks back up through the Cave with precisely measured steps. Perhaps he should have waited until Kent had eaten, to take the tray—but no, that would have been worse, surely. Watching Kent eat, as if he were in a zoo, in what couldn't be anything but an awkward silence. Especially after having told him so pointedly that he was already under surveillance every moment—

He shakes his head, as if that'll be any help to him in casting away the thought.

It feels so strange, such an inversion, to climb up into the light of the upper levels and leave Kent behind below. Every time the circumstances have been similar, Bruce has hoped never to repeat them: Kent pinned beneath his boot, bleeding; lowering Kent's body down into Diana's arms; Bruce standing in the graveyard with Kent six feet under—no, Bruce thinks. Between the two of them, Kent's the one who belongs on the high ground.

And now it's up to Bruce to get him back there.

When he reaches the monitoring area, Alfred has come down from the kitchen and is already hard at work. Bruce had formed a partial hypothesis the moment he'd realized just what he was seeing on the roof. But he hadn't wanted to jump to conclusions. When the sensors in Kent's room had roused him in the middle of the night, though, and he had seen it a second time, the resemblance had been impossible to miss.

It's even more obvious now, when Alfred has cued up the footage of Kent in the night side-by-side with a selection of somewhat older files.

"Mm, yes," Alfred says, gaze flicking from Kent to Doomsday and back again. "I understand your reluctance to make assumptions, sir, but there is an unmistakable similarity."

Bruce says nothing, only stands there and bites absently at the inside of his lip. Alfred isn't wrong: it _is_ unmistakable, looking at them both like this. There is a distinct difference in quality, of course. The recording of Doomsday is shaky and badly-focused, spliced together from news helicopters and whatever the cameras in Bruce's cowl had been able to capture, in between blasts of fire and eruptions of smoke, sudden toppling rubble and jerks of motion as Bruce had grappled, swung, grappled again. Kent, by contrast, has been caught in high definition, the cameras tucked safely into stationary corners, their unblinking stares missing nothing.

But the content—the light. Lightning, to be precise, exploding outward in brilliant arcs from each of the two vague darker figures caught in the middles of the frames; the spray of scarlet-white light, the tensed and knotted muscle and bared teeth; even the sound, the high crackle and low thunderous rumble following after, the wordless hoarse cries.

The readings taken by Bruce's suit are less precise than those taken by the monitors in place downstairs, of course. But the general shape of them is a match. And some of the things Kent said, when Bruce asked—his sense of a certain inexplicable energy, trapped and simmering beneath his skin—

There hadn't been any opportunity to interrogate Doomsday as to the exact mechanism by which he'd absorbed all that energy and then started casting it back out of himself. But Kent's description is certainly consonant with what it _looks_ like, all that red uneasy heat glowing through Doomsday's thick hide.

"Sir?"

Bruce blinks, meets Alfred's thoughtful gaze and then looks back at the screens, Doomsday's head and Kent's tipping back in eerie synchronicity as lightning darts away from them in fat ragged forks. "Yes," he says aloud. "It's worth a closer look."

"And was Mr. Kent able to provide you with any additional insight?"

Alfred can, of course, review the footage of Bruce's conversation with Kent at any time. He's well aware of that. But he's asking anyway, which means he's looking for something other than the obvious answer.

"Yes," Bruce says, gaze fixed on the bank of monitors. "There is evidence to suggest some—some kind of emotional and psychological disturbance, most probably in response to trauma. While Kryptonians show clear physical differences from human baseline, they appear capable of much the same range of emotive experience."

He keeps his tone neutral, in line with the sort of observations he'd once spent months making about Superman, analyzing hours and hours of video late into the night. He'd been scrupulously careful, then, not to smudge the lines: not to anthropomorphize Superman, not to attribute human-like intent or motivation to something that wasn't human. He had insisted on beginning from a blank slate, refusing to assume that the alien necessarily _had_ anything that could be termed "feelings", or even understood sadness, terror, pain—

"And, consequently, can be afflicted by the same sorts of emotional wounds," Alfred murmurs, gentle.

"Yes," Bruce agrees, not looking at him. "At this juncture, that would appear to be a reasonable inference."

"Oh, dear," Alfred says on a sigh. "That poor boy."

Bruce closes his eyes.

"Well. From this point forward, I imagine we shall operate under the assumption that your initial hypothesis is correct, then."

"I think so," Bruce says evenly. "Unless Luthor has meddled much more extensively with his own DNA than we'd realized, Doomsday's ability to absorb energy directed at him, alter its form and function, and re-emit it must be Kryptonian in origin. That's in line with the evidence I'd already collected regarding the influence of yellow sunlight on Superman's abilities. Which by itself already implied that the effects of such absorption vary with the properties of the energy so absorbed.

"Normally, Superman is in control of the process. But these circumstances are hardly normal. Given his proximity to Doomsday at the time of Doomsday's death, and the explosion that occurred—he must have absorbed a tremendous amount of highly unusual energy in the moments immediately preceding his own death. It's only logical to consider the possibility that we are witnessing the aftereffects."

"In more than one sense of the word," Alfred says, and then again, even more softly, "Oh, dear."

 

 

*

 

 

Bruce goes into the office.

He finds he doesn't want to; that alone makes it necessary. Putting in an appearance as Bruce Wayne has some genuine tactical value, and will eventually pay dividends—it is in its own way a productive use of his time. The same thing can't be said of sitting in the Cave watching Clark Kent read.

And Bruce Wayne is, of course, inattentive and distractible. That today it isn't a carefully-constructed cover, but instead a consequence of his total fucking inability to stop thinking about Kent locked up in his basement, is immaterial. The effect is the same. The outward appearance is consistent. That's what counts.

Bruce can feel the way his shoulders drop in relief when he steps back into the lake house, the tension that drains from his neck when he's finally able to settle again in front of the live feed from Kent's room. But those sensations are not relevant to anyone but himself.

And Kent is there, on the monitor. One hand curled behind his neck, supporting his head; the other splayed around the spine of the book propped on his chest. Gaze focused, blinking intermittently. Breathing.

Alive.

Bruce rubs a hand across his mouth and sighs, and doesn't look away from the screen.

_Alive_.

When he'd first landed on the roof of the lake house, Bruce had reflexively prioritized: what had happened to him, why he was there, what he intended, and, once he had spoken, what he meant by "help"—unthinkable, to reserve space at the top of that list for something as irrelevant as Bruce's fucking feelings. To ascertain what was essential; to react with calm, clearheaded acceptance of the facts, with efficiency, and _without_ adding to Kent's distress. That had been what Kent needed from him.

But now—

Bruce shuts his eyes.

Alive.

The reaction he wants to have is disproportionate. Its magnitude, he supposes, is appropriate to the event as such—to what he can only call the miracle of it, since the precise mechanism of Kent's resurrection is probably beyond current Earth-based science to explain. But it—

It shouldn't feel so _personal_. He hardly knows Kent. And Kent certainly doesn't know him. Kent came here because he had nowhere else to turn, and because he knows for a fact that Bruce has acquired a working knowledge of Kryptonian physiology—because Bruce had painstakingly put a cutting edge on that fact and used it to slice Kent's cheek open. If Kent feels anything in particular about Bruce, it's probably resentment, lingering disdain, something that might have been polished over time into hatred if he hadn't had to come looking for Bruce's help.

Even if Bruce permits himself the melodramatic thought that having watched Kent die _means_ something, that by it he was given the opportunity to know Kent on a deeper level despite their having spoken perhaps a hundred words to each other at most—Kent can't say the same. He may not feel like a stranger to Bruce, but Bruce is still a stranger to him.

Entirely fair. A practical, objective way to look at the situation.

And yet none of it can prevent Bruce from feeling bewildered, grateful—glad.

Kent's alive. Christ—how unbearably wonderful that is to think.

Bruce snorts under his breath and shakes his head at himself. Kent's alive; and struggling horribly with it, experiencing physical and mental fallout he couldn't possibly have been prepared for. But the hard work of sorting out how to help him through it, how to support him, how to make it easier, is within the scope of Bruce's control. Compared to death, so many other things suddenly feel eminently solvable.

He glances up at the feed. The book has toppled flat—Kent's asleep, head tipped sideways, face slack.

Bruce shouldn't get this much gratification out of watching him breathe.

He leaves the feed active in one monitor, and devotes the rest to running simulations: what it might look like if the frequency and intensity of the lightning increase, or diminish, or plateau. What damage might be done to Kent's partially-depowered body, in the first case, and how much kryptonite might need to be removed from the walls to undo it.

But the lion's share of his attention remains with Kent. And he can't bring himself to be sorry for it, because it means he notices the moment Kent moves: the first unsteady jerk of his arm, the wince that crosses his face after.

Bruce leans in. He'd reviewed the tape from the last event. Kent had suffered similarly disrupted sleep shortly before it had happened. But one data point hardly forms a pattern. They're supposed to help Kent, not sit back and watch him thrash his way through nightmares. And if this is a warning sign, another bout of lightning on its way—he'll wake Kent and then go, that's all. There's no reason to think he'll be at any risk.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Clark comes awake with a jolt. A little more literally than usual. Someone is touching him—Wayne, it's Wayne. And where his palm has settled against Clark's shoulder, there's a surge, a strange prickling sensation.

He sits up, shaking himself a little, and Wayne moves away. But the feeling doesn't, the uneven crackling trapped just underneath Clark's skin.

It's almost like an extension of the dream, like he's still halfway asleep. Because it had been a little like that, right? He squeezes his eyes shut, chasing after the half-formed memory. He'd been—it had been hot, simmering, the heat crawling heavily over him; him, his face, his eyes, as he strode grimly toward—what? And he'd had to work to push that relentless blaze down long enough to look at—

"Kent. Kent."

Wayne.

Clark rubs his eyes, grimacing. He feels slow and clumsy, disoriented. And he doesn't want to admit it, but there's a part of him that's already fixated on Wayne touching him, interrupting him, coming in here and waking him up and wanting to _talk_ to him, as if that's going to be any help—

He makes himself take a deep breath. Getting angry with Wayne won't be any help either.

Even if he really, really wants to.

Besides, he doesn't even know for sure that that's why Wayne's here. "What?" he says, a little too sharply. "What is it?"

"You seemed disturbed, Mr. Kent," Wayne says. His tone is inflectionless, bland, and his face matches it—impassive and placid, as though he's never had a bad dream in his life.

Clark looks up at him, in his goddamn suit and tie, neatly-creased slacks and perfectly-tailored jacket and that easy non-expression, and wants to _punch_ him.

He grits his teeth instead. "Is that all, Mr. Wayne? I thought you were supposed to be helping me, not barging in here every time I frown in my sleep—"

"I am helping you, Mr. Kent," Wayne says, with cool assurance, and Clark clenches his fists so tight his knuckles start to ache.

"Oh?" he manages. "Are you? Because so far I have to say your _help_ doesn't seem to be making much of a difference. Do you even know what's wrong with me yet?"

It's hardly a fair question—Wayne hasn't even had forty-eight hours to work on this, and before that he must have thought Clark was dead. Researching Kryptonian biology had probably been pretty well settled on his back burner. Where's he even supposed to start looking? How exactly is he going to come up with a solution to a problem like "sometimes lightning comes out of my face"?

And Clark knows it's not fair. It just doesn't seem like it matters. It should be understandable: the way Wayne looks at him, the conversational and even-handed, "Nothing conclusive just yet, I'm afraid." But instead it feels like cruelty, like spite.

"Why should I believe you?" Clark snarls, coming up off the bed at Wayne. He wants to—to make Wayne feel the way he does, strange and sick and cornered, under attack from all directions, skin a size too small. He wants to make Wayne feel like everything has turned on him, even himself— "Why should I listen to a single goddamn thing you have to say? Why did I ever even _come_ here?" He catches himself halfway through reaching for Wayne, and makes himself go for the chair instead, shoving it into the desk with a crack. "Why did I ever even think you would—you tried to _kill_ me!"

"Yes, I did," Wayne agrees, in a steady chilly way, almost disinterested. Clark half expects him to start examining his cuticles, maybe get out a nail file. "I stole everything I could from Luthor, and I pulled it all together and figured you out. You weren't anything more to me than a specimen in a jar, Mr. Kent, and all I wanted was to understand what made you tick so I could take you apart and stop you like a clock—"

"Shut _up_ ," Clark shouts, because he can't take any more of it, can't stand one more precisely-measured word. He grabs for Wayne, because this time he can't stop himself. He grabs for Wayne and finds him, fists his hands in that goddamn suit jacket and shoves Wayne sideways into a wall.

It's so _satisfying_ , is the thing: to hit Wayne like that and make him move, to control him even that much—to lash out where only Wayne will see it, where it doesn't matter.

And then he actually hears the impact. For a single frozen instant, he's appalled. A well-worn B-side has already started up somewhere in his head. He didn't pull that blow, he—he wasn't careful, what if Wayne is—and then he tries reflexively to check, and can't.

He can't. He can't look through Wayne, because of the room. His vision's gone, just like everything else. _Everything_. He can't hit Wayne any harder than Wayne can hit him. Not in here.

The thought is dizzying. He should have realized—the chair. He didn't break it. Is it worse or better, this way? As if he didn't already feel enough like a stranger in his own body. But—

But Wayne is all right. Every other time in his life that Clark's felt the brief petty urge to smack someone, it's always come with a shadow of guilt, the memory of Dad's stern sober face and the shape Clark's fingers could leave in steel fencing. _Be careful. You need to be careful, Clark, or you'll hurt them._ He's drilled it into himself so deep it's almost reflex: no matter what a human is doing, to him or to anyone else, he can't ever stop being careful with them.

Except with Wayne. With Batman, the first time—and now with Wayne. Clark's wanted to punch Wayne before, and _has_ ; he's slammed Wayne against plenty of other walls before this one, and even through a couple of them. But Batman had survived it, had come back swinging and taken Clark apart. And this time's no different: Wayne's fine.

Thinking that is like a weight being lifted out of his hands, like cuffs clicking open and sliding off. He feels that prickle beneath his skin pick up, and he thinks he might actually be glowing just a little bit—here and there, in muted irregular bursts, coming from somewhere inside him. But it doesn't turn into the lightning, not this time. It's like—like he skimmed just enough off the top of the anger, shoving Wayne around, that what's left won't brim over anymore.

No lightning. Just him and Wayne. Wayne, right in his face, pressed up against the wall with Clark's fists pinning him there, expression blank, staring at Clark with steady dark eyes.

And that's about when Clark realizes he's hard.

"It's all right," Wayne says quietly, because he's noticed—how could he not? Clark's got him backed up against the wall so close their chests are almost touching, would be if not for Clark's balled-up fists in the way.

Clark almost laughs. All right? It's not _all right_ , jesus, what the hell is he doing? Telling himself that if he hurts Wayne, Wayne can hurt him back—as if that makes it okay, as if it's all right for a thought like that to make him feel like this. He'd never—before, he would never have—jesus. Is he even still himself at all? How can he be sure? Maybe Clark Kent really is dead. Maybe he's just some failed experiment Luthor had dumped in the cemetery, out of some twisted sense of irony—

"It's all right, Mr. Kent," Wayne says again, and then, a careful, precise amendment, "Clark." He raises one hand to wrap it around one of Clark's fists, and then eases Clark's hand open, until he's not clutching Wayne's jacket anymore but just—just touching, palm pressed down hard over Wayne's chest. "Clark," Wayne repeats, deliberately low, and his other hand is—is at Clark's belt, Clark realizes, swallowing; is at Clark's belt, easing the strap through the buckle—

Clark makes a sound, not even a word, and grapples for Wayne's wrist, his throat tight with something he doesn't want to call fear.

Wayne goes still. "I could help you with this, too," he says. "That's all. Just let me help you."

He'd never have done anything like this before. That's not who he was. But he's someone else now, isn't he? He shoved Mom, yelled at her and then left her, he's throwing lightning and having nightmares. He wants to punch Wayne and then maybe—maybe fuck him. And that thought should feel ugly, but all it does is ratchet the buzz under Clark's skin up a notch.

Wayne's hand starts moving again, and this time Clark doesn't stop it.

"Okay," he scrapes out instead, low and rough and hoarse, and he shoves at Wayne again and watches Wayne's eyes flare just a little. "All right. Help me, then, Mr. Wayne. Help me."

 

 

*

 

 

Wayne doesn't hesitate again. Now that he has permission, he stops being careful: a couple quick tugs, one sharp enough to make Clark's breath catch, and Clark's belt is undone. And then—

Then Wayne shoves him.

Clark lurches backward, surprised, and then the anger comes roaring back up, flames fanned high—what the hell does Wayne think he's doing? Clark grabs for him and slams him back into the wall, and there's something darkly satisfying about the sound of it, the flicker that crosses Wayne's face at the impact. And then Wayne catches Clark by the wrists, and his grip is—will that bruise? It could, couldn't it? It might.

Clark swallows through a throb of heat that has nothing to do with anger, and manages to free one of his hands but not the other. Wayne's—Wayne's too strong for that. Jesus.

He hooks a leg around Wayne's knee and digs his fingers into Wayne's shoulder, and then throws all his weight backwards. They land on the bed, but it's too soft for this. And Wayne seems to think so, too, because he's hardly come down on top of Clark before he's breaking Clark's grip, grappling for a hold of his own and then tipping them off sideways onto the floor with a twist of his hips.

The breath's knocked out of Clark—he feels it with a weird exhilaration, this weakness he's not used to. But he can't waste too much time appreciating it, because Wayne's already moving again, and Clark—Clark has to keep up.

It's graceless, bruising. He manages to climb back on top of Wayne, and gets enough leverage to yank the suit jacket off. Something tears, but it doesn't give Wayne pause. Clark uses his weight to pin Wayne down, and Wayne gets an arm around his back and thrusts up against him at exactly the same moment his teeth sink into Clark's shoulder. Clark swears breathlessly and gets a hand free, twists his fingers in Wayne's hair and _pulls_ , and god, fuck, the line Wayne's throat makes as Clark drags his head back—Clark feels like he could come just looking at it.

He doesn't, not quite. Wayne's got a hand around his forearm, pushing just hard enough to make Clark's knuckles ache, trying to hang on, and that can't last forever. Clark gets a hand up around that throat instead, so he can let go of Wayne's hair without losing that beautiful curve; and he has to fight Wayne for every inch of it, but slowly, slowly, he manages to turn Wayne over underneath him.

It's so much better like this. He can keep that hand up against Wayne's jaw, wrapped around his chin, forcing his head back against Clark's shoulder, and press Wayne down into the floor—spread his thighs around Wayne's, shove his half-bared cock almost exactly where it wants to go, and listen to the sharp noises Wayne's making against his fingertips. The thought of tearing Wayne's slacks apart occurs to him, but—fuck, fuck, what is _wrong_ with him?—almost as good as fucking Wayne for real is getting to look down at the head of his own dick, straining out of his unfastened jeans, leaking and smearing against Wayne's perfect two-thousand-dollar suit.

He works his other hand around Wayne's hips, flattens it against Wayne's stomach just over his waistband, and listens to the toes of Wayne's goddamn dress shoes scraping for purchase against the floor—but they're not going to get it. Wayne's not going to flip him this time.

And slowly, grudgingly, following the pressure of Clark's hand, Wayne starts moving with him instead of against him, into the rhythm of Clark's uneven thrusts instead of counter to it. He's got one hand, one forearm, pressed into the floor, and he reaches back with the other to grip Clark's thigh, fingertips digging in so hard it feels like he's going to tear Clark apart—

"God," Clark hears himself gasp, "god, oh—" and now that Wayne's cooperating, he doesn't need the one hand to guide Wayne's hips anymore—he reaches out, eyes squeezed shut, for anything to hold onto—so _close_ —

Wayne's free hand, splayed flat against the floor, knuckles tight, is what he finds. He makes a harsh noise into Wayne's ear, wraps his fingers around Wayne's and works his hips with desperate greed, and then—finally, finally—he shudders his way helplessly through a blaze of red-white light, clutching Wayne against him, breath jerking through him so gracelessly it must sound to Wayne like sobbing.

It's such an unfamiliar sensation—the way his arms are trembling with expended effort, how hard he has to breathe even after it's over. He realizes, slowly, that he's—he's still on top of Wayne, wrapped around him. Wayne's head isn't tilted back against Clark's shoulder anymore, but forward, with Clark's fingers against his cheek, Clark's palm against his mouth—

Clark sucks in a sharp breath and eases away, something in his gut suddenly tight. They hadn't kissed. But then Wayne hadn't offered to kiss him—just to help him.

Heat's creeping into Clark's face. Pointless feeling self-conscious about it now, about the way he'd just shoved Wayne onto the floor, held him down and—and _ridden_ him, jesus, and then come all over his slacks, the edge of his shirt—

But Wayne doesn't seem bothered by it. He rolls out from under Clark a little gingerly, maybe. His forehead's reddened where it was pressed against the floor, and there's shadowed marks along his throat and the underside of his jaw, a scratch that must have come from Clark's fingernail. His shirt is a mess, which is no wonder considering how Clark yanked on it and rucked it up and then came on it.

But that's all—it's all on the surface. Wayne's expression is weirdly mild, like aliens drag him around and have their way with him twice a week. He glances down over his shoulder and makes a rueful face, and then leans over to reach for his suit jacket, abandoned on the floor. The seam that tore earlier had been under one arm; Wayne inspects it briefly and then shrugs and slides the jacket back on. "That'll still cover the worst of it, I suppose," he murmurs, as if to himself.

"Mr. Wayne," Clark says, and then doesn't know how the hell he thought he'd follow that.

Wayne looks at him with a bland, inquiring expression, which softens into something sort of like understanding when Clark can't figure out how to continue. "It was a pleasure, Mr. Kent—and I mean that," he adds, with a wry little glance down at—oh, at the telltale damp stain across the front of his slacks. Clark's just relieved, at first. And then he realizes where he's looking and flushes a little. It should be with shame, he's pretty sure, except all he can think about is—when? Had Wayne really enjoyed it, or had it only been the floor, the pressure, sheer stimulation? What had Clark done to—to make it happen?

(If he can only figure it out, will Wayne let him do it again?)

"As I'm sure you're aware," Wayne is saying, "the attached bathroom does include a shower, and I believe Alfred has already brought down clothes in your size to fill the dresser. Sleep well, Mr. Kent."

"Thank you," Clark says automatically, and Wayne smiles at him, easing to his feet, and then goes.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The suit is a loss, Bruce decides, making his way back upstairs. He moves precisely, steps carefully measured, so as not to tear anything further.

His dress shirt is damp, sticking to the small of his back where—

Christ, he thinks. Fuck.

_Did_ it help? He can recognize, from a muted sort of distance, that he's frantic, desperate, to know that it did—to think it did something, anything, that it gave Clark even temporary relief. Because Clark doesn't know what he's dealing with. Nothing as bad as Doomsday, as bad as dying, has ever happened to him before.

But Bruce knows how deep that pit goes. He's been down there more than once, and no doubt he will be again.

And having inadvisable sex with someone you don't like very much is hardly the worst way to handle it. The moment he'd figured out what was going on, Bruce had been—had been almost relieved, as unkind as that was in the face of Clark's very real struggle. There were plenty of ways for Clark to react that Bruce might not have been able to do anything about. If Clark had withdrawn, or had wanted to hurt himself—

Bruce had thought at first that it might be the opposite: that Clark, having been so profoundly injured, wanted to hurt someone else. And he'd have helped with that just as readily. It would hardly even have qualified as a gesture, as a sacrifice—in that particular room, Clark probably couldn't injure Bruce much more than a bad night of patrol.

As it is, Bruce can't even lay claim to that pitiable measure of altruism.

Clark had looked so—so _comforted_ , even glad, to see that Bruce had come in his pants. Bruce grimaces, absent, and rubs a hand across his mouth. Surely it would have been better—purer—if he hadn't, if he'd gone into it focused solely on Clark's well-being, without the shadow of his own self-gratification crawling along in silent greed behind—

(If there had been anything in this world he'd expected _less_ than Clark Kent raised from the dead, it had perhaps been Clark Kent hard and reaching for him.)

But Clark had looked glad. So perhaps Bruce's muddled motives didn't trouble him too much.

As if Bruce could do anything about it if they did. Even walking back up to the house is—he's enjoying it far too much, _relishing_ it, the stretch and ache in muscles that had been tensed, the slow electric throb of every place where he'll find bruises in the morning. The memory of Clark's body against Bruce, the heat of him, the strength—that hand threaded tight through Bruce's hair. The eager hungry way Clark had clutched at him and held him down and moved against him, as though in the process of discovering it was allowed, that he could have what he wanted and what he wanted was Bruce—

Stress relief, Bruce tells himself, stripping methodically out of what remains of the suit just outside the master bathroom. A way for Clark to let go of all that's burdening him, if only for a little while. Or to work through it, if only in the smallest part.

It doesn't help. He turns the shower on, steps into the flow of water, and everywhere he looks, everything he does, it's—it's there. The ghost of Clark's hand, as he swipes soap down his chest; the pattern of Clark's fingertips on his arms, his shoulders, faint blue marks that will bloom purple overnight. He closes his eyes, but he can still _feel_ it, can remember so precisely the sensation of Clark's weight on him, the sounds Clark had made, the way their hands had caught and tangled just before the end.

He presses his fists against the shower wall until they ache, and then, with perfect conscious understanding of how clearly this exposes the full extent of his weakness, gives in and wraps a hand around himself. In the heat of the moment was one thing. Letting himself get off on it now, afterward, clear-headed, is a profound and telling failure: as if the sex bore some significance beyond what it said about Clark's mental and emotional state. As if Bruce deserves for it to.

He shouldn't do this. He knows better. But—

(as ever)

—that doesn't stop him.

 

 

*

 

 

In the morning, he has Alfred place a call to Martha Kent.

He hadn't wanted to jump the gun. Clark might have left again as quickly as he'd arrived, or suffered complications that needed to be dealt with; a myriad of possibilities had made it inadvisable to contact Mrs. Kent immediately.

But Bruce isn't confident that Clark was clear with Mrs. Kent about where he was going, what with the way he'd arrived, how upset he'd been. And she should know he's all right.

Alfred gives Bruce a long, steady look as he reaches for his phone, and doesn't start dialing.

"Objections?" Bruce prods.

"Not as such, sir," Alfred says, tone mild. "I certainly agree that Mrs. Kent should be kept apprised of her son's well-being, and of the situation more generally. But I'll admit I am surprised by your apparent willingness to delegate. You have many strengths, sir, but that has never been among them."

Bruce looks away.

He's kept a scrupulous distance from Mrs. Kent. Clark's funeral is the closest they've come to each other since he got her safely away from Luthor's goons, and if she saw Bruce Wayne then and recognized him, nothing's come of it. He made discreet inquiries into her financial situation—funerals are expensive—and managed to orchestrate an unexpected insurance payout or two, some unclaimed property turned up by the state.

Paltry, compared to what she'd lost. But it was all he could think of.

In every other respect, he's steered clear. He has nothing to offer her. The intersection of their lives to date—tangential at most—has already led to tragedy. How will trespassing further help?

And all of that was painfully true _before_ he'd encouraged her son to give casual hatesex a try and then jerked off over it afterward.

"There's a chance she might recognize my voice," Bruce says aloud. "Not worth the risk."

"As you say, sir," Alfred murmurs.

Bruce moves away, but not quite out of earshot. Alfred's conversational tics and rhythms are familiar enough to him that he doesn't need to hear every word to understand the general shape the call is taking. The greeting, the introduction, the concise but cautious explanation—and there, Alfred's tone tipping over into genuine warmth, as Mrs. Kent presumably demonstrates her understanding of the need for discretion, despite her concern for her son.

Bruce closes his eyes. It's for the best that he's not on the other end of that phone call. There's no guarantee he'd have been able to speak clearly—or do anything but spill out a ream of half-formed apologies and incoherent promises. _It should never have happened. I regret it. I don't know why he came back, I don't know why he came to me, but I'll do anything I can to help him, anything_ —

As if Mrs. Kent ought to care; as if she owes him acknowledgment. It's the purest selfishness, to want to say any of that to her just for the sake of having her hear it. The only possible purpose to feeling like that is to _do_ something about it, to cure Clark of everything that's ailing him and send him home safe, not to _talk_ about it.

He certainly hadn't wasted any time talking to Clark last night.

Bruce grits his teeth and shakes his head, and then realizes belatedly that Alfred is looking at him—the call concluded, the phone dark. "Master Wayne?" Alfred says, in a tone that suggests it's not for the first time.

"It's done, then," Bruce says, as if Alfred hadn't caught him staring into space thinking dirty thoughts about Clark Kent.

"Yes, sir. She appreciated the call very much, and while she'd also appreciate any opportunity to talk to Mr. Kent herself, she's—aware that he might not be amenable. It seems," Alfred adds, "that he was in something of a bad way when he left. Not particularly communicative."

Interesting. Bruce hadn't thought Clark's outbursts could possibly qualify as an improvement in and of themselves, but it seems they are.

"I see," Bruce murmurs. "Thank you, Alfred."

He takes a few minutes to clip out a certain section of footage from the material Alfred will be reviewing today—the rest of the sensor readings can stay, and Alfred will no doubt be able to guess what the gap means, but—

But Bruce would rather keep the memory to himself.

It will be a relief to go on patrol this evening. There's a certain mindset that tends to come along with the cowl, a clean stark interior space that strips everything down to its essence.

Even the illusion of clarity, he thinks wryly, will be an improvement.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Clark sleeps so well that it's almost a surprise to be woken by another bout of lightning. And it doesn't feel so bad, that time—doesn't seem to wrack him as hard, and it's a little easier to just wait it out, to let it work its way through him and then go.

But the rest of the day is worse. It's—it builds up. There's something weirdly difficult about doing nothing. The room's comfortable, Clark's in no danger of running out of books, there's hardly anything to complain about. But he feels a certain restless itch climbing his skin as the hours tick by. He gets up to pace for a while, and that helps. Not quite enough to make it go away, but it helps.

He's still at it when there's a sound at the door in the evening, and he turns with a jolt, heart flipping, because what if it's—

"Good evening, Mr. Kent," Alfred says, brandishing a dinner tray, and Clark swallows down something he refuses to call disappointment. Because he's not even sure that's what it is. Does he want Wayne to come back, or doesn't he? What would he say if Wayne did? Alfred coming through that door might not fill him with the same kind of exquisite tension, but it's certainly a lot less fraught—a lot less complicated.

"Thanks, Alfred," he says, with a quick smile, and Alfred looks at him warmly and returns it.

"I also feel obliged to inform you that I spoke to your mother this morning," Alfred adds, deliberately gentle.

Clark's heart leaps into his throat. He's been trying not to think about Mom, and mostly succeeding—it had seemed pointless, when he couldn't go back or anything until he knew it would be safe, until Wayne had figured him out. "You did? Is she okay?"

"She is in excellent health," Alfred assures him, "and very glad to hear that you are well and are being taken care of. She also happened to mention how exceedingly you favor mashed potatoes when you are, and I quote, 'in a mood', so I took the liberty." He tilts his head toward the tray he's set down on the desk, and yeah, there's a nice fat helping of mashed potatoes. Clark's caught between the sting in his eyes and the urge to laugh; the laugh wins.

"Of course she did," Clark says, shaking his head. "Thank you—you really didn't have to."

"It was no trouble, Mr. Kent," Alfred tells him softly. "And, if I don't overstep myself in asking: are you?"

Clark blinks at him.

"In a mood, sir," Alfred clarifies, eyes kind.

Clark looks away. "I—I don't know," he says. "I'm—I feel—" What word is there for it? What could possibly convey all of it? The way the anger just surges up out of nowhere and takes hold of him, the strange helpless way he watches himself do things like—well.

He's almost started to think that it's the rage itself that brought him back. That if he stays in here, in this quiet little room, for too long—if he holds too still—it'll go back where it came from and leave him behind, an empty body again.

"It's all right," Alfred says. "I understand."

And it's weird, when Clark's not sure he understands it himself, but he almost thinks maybe Alfred really does.

"And now I'm afraid I had better go."

He says it easily, mild and apologetic, but Clark can't help frowning a little. "Is something wrong?"

(Is Wayne—has something happened to—)

"Oh, no, not as such," Alfred says. "But in service of keeping it that way—Master Wayne is headed out tonight, you see."

For a split second, Clark's head is full of Bruce Wayne, of the things he's seen here and there online; he feels almost like he does right before the lightning comes, sharp-edged and incandescent, thinking of Wayne outside some club with his shirt half-off, other people's hands on him, when—

"Oh," Clark says. "Batman?"

"Indeed," Alfred agrees. "Tonight is a patrol night, and Master Wayne tends to get himself into dreadful scrapes when left to his own devices." He adjusts his glasses carefully, and then says, one hand already on the door, "I don't suppose you'd care to join me, Mr. Kent?"

"What?" Clark says, and then, belated, catches up. "Oh, I—no, thank you, I'm—"

He's talking too loudly, he thinks, too loudly and too quickly, and that sentence doesn't have an ending either. As if he could be busy, or have another engagement. As if he has anything to do in this room but read or sleep or stare at the clock.

But Alfred mercifully doesn't call him on it. "Of course, sir," he says, and steps back into the room just far enough to settle one hand briefly on Clark's elbow. "And, if I may: you'll be all right, Mr. Kent."

Clark swallows, and doesn't reply—he just stares at Alfred, wordless, pleading.

"Master Wayne has applied himself to the task of ensuring as much," Alfred murmurs, "and when Master Wayne applies himself—" He trails off and raises his eyebrows.

"He does things like fight Superman and win," Clark fills in.

"Precisely," Alfred says. "Even if helping you were a profoundly terrible idea, a hopeless cause—which I am certain it is not—Master Wayne would not turn aside. It is simply not in his nature."

Clark shouldn't be glad to hear that. If there's nothing anybody can do for him, then he should—he should want Wayne to be willing to give up on him.

But he doesn't. And hearing Alfred say as much makes something in him that had been blindly grasping, desperate, settle itself in tentative satisfaction.

"Thanks," Clark says quietly, and Alfred squeezes his arm and then goes.

Clark lies on the bed afterward and stares at the ceiling. What does that make him? That he _wants_ Wayne to throw himself on that sword, to batter himself on the rock of Clark's problems even if it wrecks him—it's a shadow of that first vicious satisfaction Clark had felt on the way here, invading Wayne's privacy just because he could, because he could and because he'd told himself it was as much as Wayne deserved.

What an awful thing to think. Clark swallows hard and squeezes his eyes shut. Does Wayne think so, too? Is that why he'd let Clark—touch him?

What had Alfred been thinking, anyway, asking Clark to come out and stand by while Wayne was on patrol? As if Clark could be any kind of help; as if Clark were any sort of hero anymore, like this.

 

 

*

 

 

Wayne doesn't come by again.

At least not for a few days. It feels like they pass slowly, to Clark, with the clock the only real measurement—the clock, Alfred's trays, and the lightning surging up at irregular intervals.

The anger keeps roiling up too, unpredictable and unaimed. At the room, its inevitably increasing familiarity; at Wayne for keeping him shut up in it—

(Alfred _asked_ him if he wanted to leave it and he said no. He said no, and he meant it. It's not _Wayne's_ fault)

—and sitting up there somewhere watching him. For all he knows, Wayne's already figured out what's wrong with him, knows exactly what to do about it and how, and is just leaving him in here anyway. Waiting to see how long it'll take him to crack. _Specimen in a jar_ , that's what Wayne had said. _Take you apart and stop you like a clock_.

(And then _Just let me help you_. One had to have been a lie, right? Wayne couldn't have been equally sincere about both. But which one?)

Sometimes it ends in lightning. Sometimes he finds himself rearing suddenly off the bed, tipping the books off the shelf and hurling them at the walls, wishing he had his laser vision back long enough to just blast everything away.

But sooner or later, it recedes. He falls asleep, sometimes, or goes stalking into the bathroom looking for something else to throw and ends up dunking his head under the faucet, clear cold water pouring over him, gasping like he's coming up for air. And then he realizes Alfred's probably going to be by soon with dinner, and sheepishly goes back out to pick everything up and put it away.

It all starts to settle into something of a rhythm, without Wayne. Clark still thinks about it sometimes—it's hard not to. Every time he undresses, he can't shake the memory of Wayne's hands at his belt, those quick sure tugs, the brush of Wayne's knuckles against his cock through denim; and then he climbs into the weirdly luxurious shower already half-hard, and, well. Impossible not to imagine what it would have been like if he'd thought to drag Wayne in here instead of just down onto the floor—under the water, that crisp white dress shirt going wet and transparent against Wayne's shoulders, his chest, and then Clark could've peeled it off him, could've—

Anyway. He gets used to that, to the memory of Wayne without the reality, mind wandering off in directions he shouldn't let it go. Better that than stewing in the anger, at least. So Wayne really is helping, even in his absence.

And then, one day, he's back.

"Mr. Kent," he says, when he steps through the door, and Clark jerks in surprise—he'd heard the door move, but he'd figured it was Alfred.

"Mr. Wayne. I—wasn't expecting you."

"I imagine not," Wayne says, with a wry little smile. "But I thought you'd want to hear this from me."

Clark comes to his feet instantly. "You know what's wrong with me."

"We've collected enough data in line with our working hypothesis that we're comfortable concluding—"

"You know what's wrong with me," Clark repeats.

"We know what's wrong with you," Wayne agrees, and then the smile drops away and he pauses. "How much do you remember about the day you died, Mr. Kent?"

_More than I want to_ , Clark doesn't say. He closes his eyes. "Most of it. I remember you—the spear, all of that," and he reaches up absently to run a finger along his cheek, just where Batman had cut it.

"Yes," Wayne says, very softly.

"I remember that thing—Doomsday? Is that what everyone's calling him? I remember him. That woman who came to help us, with the shield and the rope—"

"Diana," Wayne says.

"Diana," Clark repeats. "I remember her, too. The fire, the explosions, and the—"

He stops, feeling his breath catch sharply in his throat. _The lightning_. He opens his eyes and looks at Wayne, and Wayne looks back for a long second, searchingly, and then gives him the barest nod.

"That's it, isn't it? The lightning."

"I'm sure you're aware of your own capacity to absorb energy," Wayne says. "Doomsday evidently had the same ability."

"Every time they tried to blow him up," Clark says slowly. "He just—he just took it in, threw it back out. It couldn't hurt him."

"And then you ran him through," Wayne says, courteously leaving off, _and yourself, good job_ , "and he—exploded. Needless to say, you were well within the blast radius. It's impossible to confirm, but I believe the presence of kryptonite so nearby limited the amount you were able to absorb, and possibly slowed your ability to process it. That might be what brought you back."

Clark blinks at him.

"You were buried," Wayne elaborates. "Your usual source of energy—yellow sunlight—was completely unavailable to you. You had absorbed and stored a tremendous amount of energy, but in a far less useful and more volatile form. You were able to heal yourself with it, eventually, but you can't control it. Hence ..." Wayne spreads his hands. "Lightning."

And Clark stares at him, and then feels a surge of relief so strong his head swims. "It's not me."

"It's certainly not intrinsic to you, no," Wayne begins, which—oh, no, he's misunderstood.

"No, no, not that," Clark says. "I mean—I told you, before. How I feel, the way I've been acting, the things I've done. That's the answer. It's Doomsday, it must be. I absorbed it, or—it got into me, somehow. Zod's anger, Luthor's selfishness, it's—it's not me."

He grins, shaking his head at the ridiculousness of it all, and then goes further, rolling out his neck and shoulders, letting out a long breath—because, god, what a load off. It's not him, it's not his problem. Whatever Wayne figures out to get rid of the lightning, it'll get rid of the rest of it, too. And then Clark will be himself again, and everything will be fine.

He looks at Wayne, wondering what he might say next—he probably hasn't worked out what to do about it yet, right? And Wayne—

Wayne's staring back at him. Wayne's face is utterly neutral, smooth and expressionless, his gaze steady and perfectly level. "Considering the number of unknowns, that's not impossible," Wayne allows easily.

And if there were any clearer way for Wayne to scream that he doesn't believe it for a second, Clark's not sure what it would be.

He feels the muscles in his jaw go tight. Why does Wayne always have to _ruin_ everything? Why does he keep on thinking the worst of Clark? He should remember what happened last time he did that—he should know better. "It's _not_ me," he says, sharp. "It makes sense." And as if on cue, he feels it again: that warning crackle under his skin, and the hot frustration blazing up inside him. And that's how it's been working almost the whole time, hasn't it? The lightning's worse when he's angrier. That has to be the answer.

It _has_ to.

"It's worth considering," Wayne says coolly, and before he's even finished the last word, Clark's got two fistfuls of his shirt—

"It's not me," he says, half a snarl and half a plea, into Wayne's ear. "It's not me—" because it can't be, because look at him: look what he's doing. He's backing Wayne up into the wall, tense and thrumming; he's pressing his knuckles into Wayne's chest so hard they're bound to leave marks, _again_. He can't be this person, he's—he's better than this, he's always had to be better than this.

"Clark," Wayne says, low, and puts an arm around Clark's shoulders.

"It's _not me_ ," Clark says, and—and fuck, Wayne's figured it out already, everything he can't ask for: Wayne's other hand is already at his belt.

"Clark," Wayne says again, and lets go of Clark's shoulders to take hold of his jaw, tilt his face around and make him meet Wayne's eyes. "Clark," and Clark doesn't want to do it, doesn't want to see however Wayne must be looking at him.

But he does it, and—and Wayne's just looking, eyes dark and intent.

"I'll help you," Wayne says, and for the first time it doesn't sound to Clark like a statement, but a promise—a vow, something weird and desperate creeping in at the edges. "It doesn't matter. If it's you or—it doesn't matter. Understand? I'll help you."

_You don't have to earn it_ , he doesn't say; _you don't have to deserve it_ —but Clark hears it anyway, and he squeezes his eyes shut and leans into Wayne, feels his own hands scrabble for Wayne's waistband and lets himself be undeserving.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The sex seems to help again.

If only that were why Bruce had done it—but never mind. It seems to help. Clark was a little more clearheaded during, unbuttoning Bruce's shirt all the way even if he never bothered shoving it off Bruce's shoulders, actually getting Bruce's slacks undone and forcing them partway off his hips. And afterward, he's—the transition is less abrupt. He stays where he is, leaning against Bruce, head bent, for a long moment; his breath is hot against Bruce's neck, his temple pressed to Bruce's cheek. Last time he hadn't seemed to know what to do with his hands, once he was done leaving bruises with them. This time, he leaves one settled on Bruce's hip, fingers just skirting Bruce's ass, and the other against Bruce's chest, an idle warm weight.

Even without his supersenses, he might be able to feel Bruce's heartbeat.

"Clark," Bruce says carefully.

And Clark draws in a quick breath and moves away from him—just a little, just enough to create some space. He doesn't move his hands. "Right," he says quietly, "right, sorry. I'm sure you have things to do, Mr. Wayne," and then his eyes flicker up, down, up. "Bruce," he amends cautiously, like it's an act of daring, and the look on his face is almost shy. As if after everything Bruce has done—to him, and now with him—that could somehow qualify as a trespass.

"I like to keep busy," Bruce agrees, mild, and Clark's mouth twitches, the corners of his eyes crinkling, gaze suddenly warm.

"I bet," Clark says, and stands just like that for a moment, rubbing his thumb with torturous, absentminded gentleness against Bruce's collarbone, before he finally steps away and lets Bruce go.

When Bruce has cleaned himself up, he returns to the Cave to find Alfred at the desk, eyes very deliberately averted from the monitors. "More video to remove from the archives, sir?" he murmurs, one eyebrow arched.

And he clearly already knows the answer to that question, so Bruce can safely ignore it. "I enlightened Mr. Kent as to the confirmation of our working hypothesis," he says instead. Every piece of data they've collected since Clark first went into the room has lined up in place, right within the margin of error Bruce would expect. It's been as clear as he could ask for.

Alfred looks up and studies Bruce. "And?"

"And he—wanted causation, not correlation," Bruce says. "A silver bullet, a solution to every problem at once."

"Ah," Alfred says, looking away again toward one of the monitors and settling his glasses a little higher up his nose. "So. He is attempting to displace the attribution of a particularly thorny emotional difficulty to an external source, rather than be honest with himself about what he is feeling and why. How extraordinary and unusual. You must be struggling to wrap your mind around it, sir."

Bruce gives him a flat stare.

And Alfred must feel it. He glances over to meet it with a mild smile—and a steady, unwavering gaze.

"I had intended to call Mrs. Kent again within the hour," he murmurs, still giving Bruce that unrelenting look. "I don't suppose you'd care to speak to her, sir?"

"No," Bruce says shortly, turning away.

 

 

*

 

 

Clark didn't intend it; but the way he'd answered when Bruce had asked him about the day of his death has reminded Bruce that there's someone else who'd probably like to know that Clark is alive.

He goes up on the roof to call Diana, feeling furtive and a little ridiculous. Clark won't be able to hear it—he wouldn't even if Bruce were down in the Cave. But some half-formed impulse insists that he do it anyway, that whatever vulnerability this conversation will expose should be contained as well as possible.

It's the first time he's been here since Clark arrived. And the first time in much longer than that since he's done it without alcohol to hand. Alfred will be pleased.

He opts for video. The connection will be good enough for it, and this line is secure. And he'd—like to see Diana.

She picks up right away, with a demure little Diana Prince smile. "Bruce! What a pleasure," tone a little dry, and then, warmer, "How are you? I assume if it were an emergency you would already have interrupted me."

"Yes," Bruce agrees.

"And Alfred?" Diana says. "Please apologize to him for me, I've been very slow to answer his last letter—there is a new exhibit coming in."

"Greek statuary, I hope."

"Ha ha," Diana says, pointedly unamused; and then her eyes narrow. "Bruce?"

"Alfred is fine," Bruce tries.

"And you?" Diana presses, not impressed with the feeble misdirection. "If you need me—"

Bruce wonders distantly what would happen if he said he did—if she'd leap through the ceiling, wherever she is, with the phone still in her hand. If there's one thing he might be convinced to thank Lex Luthor for, it's Luthor's theft of that photograph of hers.

"No," he says. It's impossible to work up to, impossible to qualify, so he doesn't try. He looks away from the phone and then back again, and takes a deep breath. "Clark Kent is alive."

For a moment, Diana just looks startled, mouth and eyes round—and that can't possibly happen to her very often, Bruce thinks. And then, in a blink, the expression gives way to joy: that brilliant smile that so utterly transforms her face. "Alive? What happened? Is he all right? Bruce—"

"He's fine," Bruce says automatically, and then is forced to qualify. "Mostly."

And if anyone will understand, she will—she stood in the trenches of World War I herself. She knows exactly what Clark is going through.

So Bruce explains it to her. He tries to stick to the facts, describing Clark's arrival, the immediate demonstration of the physical problem and the attendant issues that came to light a little more gradually. He doesn't dwell on the worst of it. But Diana's expression sobers more and more as he goes on.

"I see," she says gently, when he's done. "It was clever of him to think of you—and good that in the end he chose to go to you."

And god, that hadn't even occurred to Bruce. He'd known it was a leap of faith, in a way, Clark coming to ask Batman for help, but Clark had been so unhesitating when he'd arrived, so insistent. Bruce hadn't considered the possibility that the scales could have tipped the other way—that Clark might have weighed his best chance of getting the help he needed against everything he knew about Bruce, and found it wanting.

"Yes," he says aloud. "I—hope it was."

And that makes Diana's brow furrow just a little. "Bruce," she says, "I know it must be difficult—and that you would never say so, which means I must say it for you. It's all right," she adds, before he can argue, and smiles faintly. "I know that you and I have different relationships to the truth. I like it, and I like to tell it, especially when I think it matters. So listen to me when I say this, and understand that I believe it: you are doing well."

Bruce closes his eyes.

"Clark came to you for a reason," Diana continues, warm and kind and inexorable. "But that one reason could not have been enough to keep him. He stays for others—and some of them he probably does not even know himself. He stays because you _are_ helping him; because he's better there with you than he was alone; because he wants to. Please do not discount these reasons just because they're strange to you—just because you're not sure you understand them."

Bruce huffs out half a laugh. "I can't imagine what you mean by that."

"Let me help you," Diana says, dry, and then her face turns serious again. "You don't like things you don't understand. You don't trust them. But please, if you can, trust Clark."

"You don't even know him," Bruce manages distantly.

"I saw what he did for us," Diana says. "For all of us, and for the world. I know enough," and she sounds sure, sure and certain, utterly without doubt. "And so do you. He's hurt and angry, he doesn't know everything—neither do you. Don't decide how he feels about this for him."

"I'll—try," Bruce says.

They talk a little more, about the exhibit, about Diana's work, about Clark's mother and how she's managing, before they hang up. And then he sits there on the roof and watches the sun go down, and thinks about it. It's next to impossible not to wonder what Clark's thinking, not to work out what seems like the list of likeliest options and then strategize in response—

But he can—try.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Clark doesn't mean to ask, exactly. It's just that it occurs to him that he doesn't know what Bruce has been doing with the cameras when he—uh, visits. Whether he turns them off or—

Alfred blinks at him twice, when he blurts it out, and then says easily, "Of course he doesn't."

Clark stares at him, face going wildly hot. "He—"

"Goodness, no," Alfred repeats. "Master Wayne would never. What if something had happened? If you'd had another one of your spells, valuable data might have been lost. No, no—Master Wayne removes material he deems ... unimportant," and this is said with a small punctuating cough, Alfred's gaze directed politely away from Clark, "after the fact."

"Oh," Clark says. "Uh. Okay."

"He hasn't spoken about it with me," Alfred hastens to assure him. "He simply made no effort to conceal his modifications. I took the hint, Mr. Kent, and I have not made a habit of watching the live feed in my idle moments—I promise you that your privacy has not been breached except in service of determining the cause of your ailment."

"Thanks," Clark says quickly. He didn't really think Alfred had—well, at least not on purpose. But if Bruce has been leaving the cameras on, it wouldn't be Alfred's fault if he'd stumbled across something a little more risqué than he'd been expecting. And—wait. What? "So he just—assumed you'd figure it out? He didn't tell you?"

Alfred chuckles. "Oh, dear me, no. Begging your pardon, Mr. Kent, I fear you are underestimating the complexity of the process in question. In order to tell me about it, Master Wayne would have to decide what he wished to say about it: how he felt about it, which words to use and which to avoid, what might seem conspicuous if said and what might seem conspicuous if left unsaid.

"It's impossible to say for certain. But were I to speculate, I would imagine that he reviewed his options and found them all unacceptably revealing. Some of them would have said the wrong things; and some of them would have said the right things; and he could not bring himself to do either."

"Oh," Clark says, blinking. "You—know him really well, don't you?"

Alfred smiles, and pats Clark gently on the arm. "Oh, yes, indeed," he says.

"I was surprised," Clark admits. "When he first brought me in. The way you talked to him—like you were friends. I didn't really think he had any."

It sounds silly, when he says it out loud. But it had been true. He'd heard Wayne's earpiece at the fundraiser, he'd listened close. And it had been Alfred's voice in Wayne's ear, he knows that now. But at the time, he'd been too focused on Wayne—on Batman—to follow the thread to its end: Batman didn't work alone, not really, no matter what it looked like. At the time he'd tuned in, that particular moment, Alfred's voice had been calm, professional. But the way he'd talked to Bruce in the doorway had been different. Warm, fond, a little exasperated. Caring.

Batman in that metal suit, growling, eyes alight—it had been hard to imagine anybody caring a lot about that guy.

But then, Clark thinks slowly, Bruce had thought the same thing about Superman, and probably for about the same reason.

So they'd both been wrong, in the end.

"Yes, well," Alfred is saying, his voice now going a little dry, "Master Wayne sometimes seems to be under that impression himself. I make every effort to correct him on that point, and do occasionally win a battle here and there—but the war is ongoing, so to speak." He claps his hands together, rubs them, and raises his eyebrows. "But you've distracted me, Mr. Kent! I'd meant to talk to you about you, not Master Wayne."

"Me?"

"Quantitative data is only part of the puzzle," Alfred informs him. "How are you feeling? Better? Worse? Tell me."

Clark hesitates. If he says one thing when the sensor readings say another, does that mean he's not paying enough attention? Not thinking about it hard enough, or—

"There are no wrong answers, Mr. Kent," Alfred says gently. "Your impressions will affect how we interpret changes in our readings. It's just another data point, and as such cannot be incorrect."

"Right," Clark says. "Well—better, I think. I don't know if anything's actually changed, but it doesn't feel like it's lasting as long, when the lightning happens. Or maybe I'm just less upset about it. But either way, I guess that's better. And I—" He breaks off, trying to figure out how to phrase it. "I feel like—I can sort of tell when it's coming?"

It's hard to say for sure. He's thought a couple of times—mostly with Bruce—that the lightning had been close and then he'd staved it off. He can't prove a negative; maybe it hadn't been coming at all. But that's what it felt like.

"There was something that used to happen to me sometimes when I was a kid," he adds, slowly. "When I'd been out in the sun for a whole bunch of days in a row—in the summertime, with school out and nothing else to do except steer clear of Dad so he couldn't give me chores. There was one year that was really hot, a drought. And I got—I got so warm."

It hadn't occurred to him to compare the sensations. The difference in the energy, maybe: the sunlight hadn't pricked or pinched or crackled, hadn't jerked him around so hard. It had just— _blazed_ , steady heat under his skin. It hadn't even bothered him until he'd started setting the grass on fire just touching it, the temperature of his skin hot enough to burn. Mom had kept him in the shade for about a month, and made him go everywhere with an umbrella—he remembered thinking how lucky it was school was out.

"I could feel it, inside me. Kind of—simmering. It's not quite the same this time, but I think I'm starting to figure it out."

"Well! That _is_ good news, Mr. Kent," Alfred says. "Which reminds me, I'd been meaning to ask again whether you wouldn't care to step out for a bit?"

Clark stares at him, swallowing. He _thinks_ he can tell, but that's—he could fry Alfred any minute—

"Just a little while," Alfred adds, conversational, casting a quick glance around the room. "These four walls must get dreadfully boring. Master Wayne has already headed out on patrol, and I'm due in the Cave shortly—it would be a pleasure to have you join me."

"Well," Clark says. "I—okay."

 

 

*

 

 

It's weird, how hard it is for him to convince himself to step outside the room. He'd felt restless in there, he'd gotten bored, he'd even told himself he was mad at Bruce for keeping him in there—except the door's never been locked. And he'd never opened it, never so much as stepped out into the hallway for a minute just to appreciate the change in the scenery.

Which he guesses means he was trapped; it just wasn't the room that was trapping him.

Alfred leads the way down the corridor, humming absently. And then tsking, when they cross through a room and pass a table covered in gadgetry—with a plate balanced on one corner, dusted with crumbs. "How many times must I tell him," Alfred murmurs with a sigh, picking it up and shooting a wry well-what-can-you-do sort of smile over his shoulder at Clark.

"Sorry, I think I'm on Bruce's side this time," Clark says with a laugh. "You might be able to recruit my mom to your cause, though."

"Oh, believe me, I have," Alfred says. "A single scolding from her, and I'd never find a dish out of place in this house again. All that remains is to put Master Wayne in a position to hear it."

"Oh?"

"He's very conscientious about reminding me to call her," Alfred elaborates, "so as to update her on your condition. But I have not been able to convince him to so much as say hello to her."

"Really," Clark says slowly.

"Mmhmm," and then Alfred turns aside to grab a chair, waving Clark forward toward a bank of gleaming monitors and a desk covered in a bewildering array of equipment. "Go on, go on—I'll be just a moment," and then he brandishes the plate in explanation and heads off up yet another set of stairs.

Clark looks around while he waits, testing his grip gently on the back of the chair. He's far enough away from the room now that it's barely a tingle at the furthest edge of his perception, and everything is filtering back to him, coming alive, like he'd had a limb asleep without realizing it. He glances at the monitors and then through them, the snarl of wires and circuits behind their smooth shining surfaces; comes up just the barest inch off the floor, feet on nothing but air—and then he realizes he's brought the chair with him, and also that it's starting to creak under his hand, and hastily sets it down.

Alfred should be coming back any moment, he thinks, and tries opening up to listen for it. It takes a second for him to sort through the rush of air outside, distant traffic, frogs in the lake, and pick out Alfred's footsteps. And another sound, closer and further away at the same time.

Bruce—Bruce's breathing.

Clark blinks, and looks over the desk. Bruce must have an earpiece with him, a radio. Clark is hearing him across the open channel.

"There we are," Alfred says from over by the stairs. His voice is thunderous by comparison, and Clark winces a little—but it only takes enough time for him to cross the room for Clark to remember how to adjust to it, how to brace for two extremes. When Alfred turns the radio up, Bruce's breathing comes through like he's there, standing at Clark's shoulder, and Clark feels a flush start to crawl up his neck.

"Sir?"

Bruce doesn't answer, as such—just makes the barest vocalization, a brief low hum of acknowledgment.

"I have Mr. Kent with me, sir," Alfred says.

Utter silence, for an instant. Clark would think the radio had cut out, but Bruce's heart is still there, beating away steadily even further in the background.

"A field trip," Bruce murmurs. "Fun."

Clark grins. What a dick. "Yeah," he says aloud. "You're missing out."

"Mm," Bruce says, and then there's a flurry of muffled sound—the cape, Clark thinks, flapping around him as he maneuvers somehow. Drops? Yeah, must be: there's the low thud of his boots, one last flutter as the cape settles into place around him.

"I take it we're off to the East End tonight," Alfred says, and for a moment Clark almost assumes Alfred could hear it, too—and then he blinks and refocuses his eyes, and figures out which monitor is showing a map.

"Trouble."

"Indubitably," Alfred allows. "And how much of that trouble will we be—"

"Wait," Clark says.

He didn't even mean to, it just—he just blurts it out. Alfred turns to look at him; and on the other end of the radio, Bruce's boots come to a halt with the barest little scrape.

But as long as he's said it—

He closes his eyes and concentrates, pushes that faint persistent kryptonite tingle out of the way and listens. "There's—below you," he says slowly, and then has to stop again because his own voice is drowning it out. What _is_ that? Clicking, almost mechanical, but not quite even. "There's somebody loading a gun," Clark realizes.

Bruce is silent for a beat. "Could be—"

"Not police," Clark says, shaking his head absently even though Bruce can't see him. "A lot of guns. Assault rifle cartridges, not Glock magazines."

He stops and bites his lip. Bruce didn't ask for any of that, but it's something he should know, right? It's useful. Helpful. Because Clark—

Clark can help Bruce, too. Even when there's something wrong with him, he can still—he can still do something good.

"Noted," Bruce says, brief but not unkind. The effect of listening for him like this isn't going away: it's like he's murmuring every word right into Clark's ear. Strange, hearing him so close without—without feeling the heat of him, without the steady even weight of his hands on Clark, without the brush of his breath or the sweep of his hair. It makes Clark want to listen harder, louder, until Bruce's heartbeat is so clear he almost is feeling it; until he's wrapped up in Bruce so far he almost doesn't mind that he can't touch him.

"All right, sir," Alfred says. "Don't enjoy yourself too much."

"Never," Bruce whispers, breath of a laugh that maybe only Clark can hear, and then the cape rustles again and he's off.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Clark doesn't stay through the whole patrol. Bruce can hear him beg off partway through, soft muffled excuses in the background before Alfred says, "Of course, Mr. Kent. Sleep well—and my thanks for your assistance."

Something else; not quite clear enough to parse, but the tone is faintly bashful.

"Nonsense," Alfred says, warm and stern. "You were invaluable."

Bruce permits himself a small smile.

It's entirely true, after all. His efficiency was high enough with Clark present that he gives it another hour and then calls it an early night—the word seems to have spread that the Bat is out, and that can have a chilling effect that makes extending patrol pointless.

Alfred is, naturally, waiting for him when he returns. He's conspicuously mild and ordinary in his inquiries after the one instance of superficial damage to the suit, the condition of Bruce's equipment, whether a moment's struggle with a grappling hook had been a mechanical failure or not—

"Just ask," Bruce growls at him.

Alfred's eyebrows leap; as if he doesn't know exactly what he's doing, Bruce thinks wryly. "Well, I'm sure I don't know what you mean," he says, "but now that you mention it I had intended to say—I hope it was all right to invite Mr. Kent to look in tonight."

"Better to ask forgiveness than permission?" Bruce says, raising an eyebrow right back at him.

"That is what they say, sir," Alfred observes placidly.

Bruce makes a dubious noise. But he hardly has a foundation to play at anger now. If he'd minded Clark being there, he'd have said so immediately—he might even have called patrol off entirely and headed back.

Which is a fact Alfred is well aware of.

"I also wanted to take the opportunity to mention something else to you," Alfred continues, already turning away to peer down at the dented shin plate propped up on the worktable. "Mr. Kent shared a reminiscence with me this evening that may prove relevant to his ailment."

"Oh?"

Alfred nods toward one of the monitors without looking away from the shin plate. "I took the liberty of queueing up the footage for you, sir."

Bruce watches it once and then again, listening for any details he might have missed the first time even as he begins to turn the information over. "You think sunlight might help," he says to Alfred, when he's done.

"Yes," Alfred agrees. "To be more precise—I think sunlight and getting out of that room might help, and those are, happily, mutually inclusive outcomes. If, as we have theorized, he is utilizing what he absorbed from Doomsday in place of the sunlight he could not find in his grave—" Alfred shrugs a shoulder.

"Preventing the absorption of a less damaging kind of energy may not be helping," Bruce fills in. "And depowering him may only be stopping him from using it up. The best thing for him might be to—speed the progress of what remains of Doomsday's energy through his system, rather than slow it down."

"Just so, sir," Alfred says.

"And I take it you have something in mind," Bruce prods.

Alfred contemplates the shin plate more closely for a moment, and then glances at Bruce over the tops of his glasses with a look that's both sage and vaguely pitying. "Take him for a walk, sir."

Bruce looks away. He ought to reset the video, that's all.

"Around the lake a few times, perhaps," Alfred continues, idle and utterly merciless. "That should do very well, to start."

"Alfred—"

"Just thinking aloud, sir," Alfred murmurs. "Falling into bad habits in my old age."

Bruce bites the inside of his cheek. It shouldn't be more difficult, shouldn't feel more complicated, than being prepared to let Clark hit him until Clark felt better—or than actually letting Clark drag him to the floor and make him come, for that matter.

Clark will probably be glad for the opportunity to go outside. Bruce can offer it to him; it has, after all, always been available to him, but Alfred's experiences tonight support the idea that an explicit invitation may be necessary in order to encourage Clark to take advantage of it.

That's all. It doesn't need to be any more complicated than that.

 

 

*

 

 

Around the lake seems excessive, when Clark still has to be carefully convinced to go as far as the Cave. But the roof is hardly much further than the uppermost levels—especially to Clark, when he's that far away from the kryptonite-embedded walls.

"Good point," Clark says, tipping his head back to glance up the side of the lake house. And there isn't any more warning than that before he's taken Bruce by the arms and lifted them both off the ground.

Bruce controls his reflexive startle response with a mild effort, and allows Clark to settle him back down onto the surface of the roof. And then—

Then he can't do anything but stare at Clark for a long moment, helplessly snared. Clark has closed his eyes, tilted his head back. It's a lovely day—Bruce chose to ask today for a reason—and Clark is clearly interested in appreciating that wholeheartedly. The lights in his room have always been calibrated to mimic the wavelengths of yellow sunlight with reasonable accuracy. But the way Clark is turning his face to the sky now, the blissfully slow breath he draws as he does it, implies that reasonable accuracy is insufficient.

He looks beautiful.

"Better?" Bruce hears himself ask, from what feels like an immense distance.

Clark cracks an eye open to glance at him and then laughs a little, sheepish. "Yeah," he admits. "I—felt out of control. I still do, a little bit, but—I knew the room could hold me. It made it feel like it wasn't up to me, and that's what I wanted. I wanted to know that even if I lost it, nothing bad was going to happen. And that was the only thing that mattered to me. I didn't care about—about feeling good. I'm not sure I _could_ feel good, then."

"But this—feels good," Bruce makes himself say, and thankfully it comes out only a little hoarse.

And Clark leans back a little and smiles up into the sunlight. "Yeah," he says softly.

He hasn't let go of Bruce's arms.

The smile fades. He doesn't open his eyes. "I thought I was going to die," he adds after a moment, "when you told me they were two different problems. The lightning and the—and everything else."

Bruce can't stop himself from swallowing hard, a sick sour taste suddenly climbing into his throat. "Clark—"

"I wanted you to tell me you were going to fix everything," Clark says quietly. "All of it. That you were going to give me a pill, or a shot, or whatever else, and then I'd just—I'd just never have to feel like that again. I'd go back to the way I was before any of it happened.

"But it doesn't work like that, does it?"

He opens his eyes again and looks at Bruce, and smiles a little, just the edge of his mouth slanting up.

"No," Bruce says.

"Yeah," Clark agrees, squinting up at the sun. "I think I'm starting to figure that out."

 

 

* * *

 

 

Clark was expecting it to make him a little more nervous, being up on the roof again with Bruce.

Not that it isn't weird, because it is. He remembers the first time, coming in for a landing and finding Wayne—Bruce, but he'd only thought "Wayne" then—sitting there drinking, watching the sunset, just another pleasant evening by his private little secret lair of a lake. How unmoved Wayne had seemed. Surprised, sure, but he'd controlled it so easily, looking Clark over with that cool assessing stare like he could already tell exactly how broken Clark was. Like he hadn't helped do it, hadn't tried his hardest to make it happen. It had only made Clark so much angrier, having Wayne look at him that way, and then—

Then the lightning had come again.

But it doesn't come now. Clark stands on the roof and soaks up the sun, and his hands are steady, comfortable, on Bruce's arms; he presses in just a little with his fingertips, and this far away from the room, the kryptonite not even registering, he can feel the slightest twitch of Bruce's muscles, the pulse of blood through Bruce's forearms, the transferred movement of Bruce's ribcage as Bruce breathes.

And Bruce just—lets him. He isn't getting half as much out of this experience as Clark is, surely. The sun probably feels nice, and the breeze. It's a really beautiful day. But that's not reason enough for _Batman_ to stand around doing nothing. Is it?

Maybe it is. Clark settles his palms a little more closely around Bruce's elbows. There hadn't been much distance between Wayne and Batman at first, as far as Clark could tell. Take the jackass from the fundraiser with the earpiece, stick a high-tech suit of bulletproof armor on him and drop the voice an octave, and squint: sure, that was Batman. Both remote, a little cruel, cold-eyed and controlling, so sure they knew best. Made perfect sense.

But that guy—that guy wasn't patient enough for this. That guy wasn't interested in being careful with people who needed it, or letting them push him around until they felt better, or making promises and keeping them.

_Just let me help you. It doesn't matter. If it's you or—it doesn't matter. I'll help you._

He'd sounded so strange then, so uncertain. Like he hadn't known what he was doing either. He'd stopped feeling like Wayne and started feeling like Bruce: Bruce, whose hands shook a little sometimes when he touched Clark, who made bad jokes over Batman's radio, who for some reason was scared of Mom. Who had a butler who wasn't a butler but a friend, and knew all Bruce's weird passive-aggressive maneuvers inside out. Who invited Clark outside just to stand in the sun.

Clark opens his eyes. Bruce is already looking at him, gaze skipping back and forth across his face—maybe he has been the whole time Clark's eyes were shut, Clark thinks, and he feels something warm and impossibly light steal through his chest.

"Thank you," he says.

Bruce's mouth goes flat; his eyes look suddenly hard, remote. "For what?" he says, inflectionless.

Clark frowns at him. What the hell kind of question is that? "For everything. For—Bruce, what do you mean, 'for what'? Are you kidding?"

Bruce shrugs one shoulder easily, and looks out across the roof toward the lake. "You were right when you first arrived, Clark," he says. "I did owe you. I still do. Hardly selfless payback, is it? Offering to help you with this gave me a chance to study you even more thoroughly. Which is an opportunity that's only of use to me because I already gathered a pretty generous initial dataset by trying to kill you." He glances at Clark and tosses him a weird flinty smile, brittle and chipping. "You shouldn't forget that."

Clark stares at him. "You sure haven't forgotten it," he says slowly.

And Bruce breaks away from him all at once at that, steps back far enough to move out of Clark's reach and turns away, toward the corner where stairs lead down from a skylight into the house, without saying a word.

Clark almost follows him—but he stays where he is instead, watching Bruce walk away from him and turning that thought carefully over, feeling like he's almost on the cusp of understanding something.

 

 

*

 

 

Bruce doesn't come visit him again for a while.

To his credit, Clark supposes, he isn't completely unsubtle about it. There's a sudden run of evening commitments on Bruce Wayne's schedule, one or two with actual tactical value to Batman and a few more tacked on as cover. It wouldn't seem suspicious except for the timing—except for how Clark can't stop thinking about the look on Bruce's face as he'd turned away from Clark, the way he'd smiled just beforehand.

But Clark doesn't want to push it. Not—not right away. He's hardly in any position to lecture Bruce about not dealing with things, after all, or making bad decisions because he couldn't figure out how to make good ones.

It's weird to think about, in a way. He'd come here because he needed help, and because he knew Batman could handle him at his worst. It hadn't occurred to him that at least in part, Bruce might have let him stay for basically the same reasons: because Clark could handle _Batman_ at his worst, too, and because—

And because Bruce needs help, even if he can't bring himself to ask for it.

So Alfred passes along Bruce's excuses, in a flat tone that says they really are as weak as they seem to Clark, and Clark doesn't argue with them. If there's anything he's learned from himself after all this, it's that sometimes it's okay for things to take time. Sometimes there is no quick fix, no easy cure. Sometimes there's just going to be something wrong with you for a while.

He concentrates on trying to spend a little more time outside the room. He can't convince himself to go up on the roof every day—not when he still electrocutes a worktable or two half the time he's out in the Cave, when the lightning comes over him a little faster than he's expecting. But when he starts to feel restless, irritable, he takes a book up and lies on the hood of the Batmobile; or he goes looking for Alfred, sits with him by the monitors tracking Bruce.

Because apparently even when the evening out isn't one of the tactical ones, Alfred still keeps an eye on Bruce's signal. "You'd be amazed how much trouble Master Wayne can get himself into," Alfred tells Clark dryly, "even when he's not trying. Or," he amends, "perhaps you wouldn't."

It does sound like Bruce.

So Clark doesn't feel totally unjustified in keeping an ear out, too. Bruce _is_ good at getting in trouble. And that night on patrol—Clark really can help him, a little bit.

(If only he could be as sure that he's any help in the way Bruce needs most.)

There are a lot of other things playing across the monitors, of course. Some kind of automated tracker for the locations of 911 calls, and what looks like live running transcription of local police chatter. But it's not the same as being able to reach out across all that distance for Bruce's breath, Bruce's heartbeat, and knowing for sure that nothing's happened to him. Listening to him clink glasses, to that easy condescending Bruce Wayne tone he uses for small talk—Clark can't even convince _himself_ that that's necessary.

But it's the closest he's been able to get to Bruce in days. He's too selfish not to.

And in the end, he's zeroed in so tightly on Bruce, and just Bruce, that he almost misses it. Alfred's the one who leans forward, frowning, and says, "We have a 911 call just outside the gala—bit too close for comfort, Mr. Kent," and only then does Clark widen himself up enough to catch it.

That's a lot of combat boots, for a gala.

"Gunmen," Clark says, for Alfred's benefit. "Throughout the building, they're—" and then someone starts shouting, and he can't listen to it and talk over it at the same time, even with superpowers. But it only takes a couple of sentences for him to catch the general drift. "Hostages. They're taking hostages. They want something from—somebody named Falcone?"

"Yes," Alfred says grimly, "I believe he and Master Wayne are acquainted. As I recall, his daughter was on the guest list for tonight, but with the rest of the family otherwise occupied, Master Wayne believed the risks to be acceptably low."

"So he didn't take anything with him?"

"He didn't take anything with him," Alfred agrees. "And while I am confident that, given time, Master Wayne could come up with a way to neutralize them using only champagne flutes and rococo furniture, it would be preferable if—"

He's cut off by the gentle buzz of a phone. Not Bruce's—Clark can tell that much. Bruce is in the middle of a group of people who are all being made to lie down on the floor, halfway through a snide remark about the uselessness of the Gotham PD. There's nothing in his vicinity that's ringing to match. Would anyone else in that building have Alfred's number?

It doesn't seem likely, but Clark opens up a little further just in case—and when Alfred looks at the screen, raises his eyebrows, and answers, Clark can hear his mild, "Miss Prince, what an unexpected pleasure," twice over.

"Alfred," says a warm familiar voice, and Clark gropes for a name; the shield, the rope, the gleaming armor and the smile, and Bruce had said she was—

"Diana," he says aloud, and Alfred glances up at him.

"Clark," she says, and—oh, of course: she can hear him too. Through the phone, and maybe even without it.

"I don't suppose you should happen to be calling me this evening from a gala being hosted in Gotham, by any chance?" Alfred murmurs.

"I heard them coming and—stepped away," Diana says, and then adds, tone blithe, "I needed to powder my nose."

"Naturally," Alfred says, with an unforced smile. "You should have a little time, then, until they find you and relieve you of your phone."

"Yes," Diana agrees. "Or I can get to the roof, if that's better."

"Hmm." Alfred taps a few keys, and one of the monitors is suddenly displaying blueprints, a set of schematics, satellite imagery captured on a sunny day. "You were not on the guest list, you know," he says absently into the phone, eyes still on the building's layout.

"I found a young man who was willing to be convinced to take a plus-one," Diana explains. "Bruce called to tell me about you, Clark, and said there was no need for me to visit, so of course I arranged to come as soon as I could. It seemed the courteous thing to do, to let him see me here so he would have a little warning."

"Oh, you are the very soul of courtesy, Miss Prince," Alfred says, "and if Master Wayne tries to tell you otherwise, I implore you not to listen." And then, in a moment, his tone sobers into something entirely professional: "Is your armor with you?"

"I might be able to retrieve it—"

"I can get it," Clark says.

Alfred turns to look at him.

"If you tell me where," Clark adds. "I can—I can use the speed, go get it on my way there."

He hadn't quite realized until he said it that he—that he intended to go. And by the look on Alfred's face, Alfred hadn't realized it either.

But he does. The lightning hasn't come all day, and he's getting better at telling when it's close. He can use the speed if he has to, the flight, and get up into the sky so he doesn't hurt anyone. If it even comes at all. And he—

He can't just sit here and listen. He has to do something. He _wants_ to.

"That would be wonderful," Diana says warmly; and when she says it, Clark almost believes it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Bruce is obnoxious.

That's his best chance, he assumes. If he can get them to hit him hard enough that they think they've knocked him out, they might drag him off to the side of the room, or leave him lying somewhere close enough to a table for him to ease under it, get himself out of sight. Out of sight, out of mind—and then he might be able to take them by surprise. If he's exceptionally lucky, they might even haul him to a restroom to check him over and throw a little water on him; he could take out two or three in a small room without too much trouble, and as long as there are no cameras in there, no one will take them seriously if they try to claim Bruce Wayne worked them over.

Really, the only set of circumstances he _can't_ work with is being stuck in the middle of a roomful of people, all of whom are fully conscious.

But it's possible he tips the scale a little bit too far. A couple of them seem to be on edge—having second thoughts about getting on Carmine Falcone's bad side, possibly—and Bruce Wayne's conspicuous failure to cooperate breaks the camel's back sooner than Bruce is expecting.

"Will you just fuckin' _shut up_ ," one of them snarls, and hops over the intermediary pistol-whip Bruce had anticipated to simply press the mouth of his gun against Bruce's temple.

A couple people in the background scream a little, reflexive reaction to the implied threat, and some of them move a little—something off about it, Bruce thinks, but he's not sure what and he can't exactly turn around to look. He stalls for time by warily lifting his hands, palm-out, and giving the man a cajoling sort of smile.

Too contemptuous a response and he'll get himself shot in the head. Too deferent, though, and he'll be back at square one.

But in the end he doesn't have to decide, because the moment he opens his mouth is also the moment the enormous bay window at the end of the hallway explodes inward.

He has a split second to catalogue the details: Diana, because of course it's Diana, fully armored, tiara gleaming, dropping through the air to land—as she so likes to do—on one knee, just as the hail of broken glass around her comes down likewise. The beginning of another chorus of screams, more surprise than anything else; the hostage-takers jerking at the sound and turning, and—

And the one standing by Bruce, tensing, gun pressing briefly even harder against Bruce, and he'd already put his finger on the trigger.

Foregone conclusion: he'll squeeze.

And then, impossibly, the gun is gone. The gun's gone and the man is down, legs knocked out from under him, and he's not even done falling when Bruce feels an arm at his waist.

(And that's it, that's what was off about the room. Too many people; an additional figure in the background that Bruce couldn't account for.)

"Don't freak out," Clark says into his ear, and Bruce barely has time to contemplate the potential consequences of him flailing a limb in surprise while Clark's pulling him at inhuman speed through a doorway—an instant of vertigo, a protesting pop in his ears, and then he's blinking out at the nighttime skyline of Gotham, from the roof of the Royal Hotel.

"I assume that wasn't intended to be Superman's big comeback," he hears himself say, only a little breathlessly.

"Not really," Clark agrees. "But it's okay—Diana's about to get the lights," and, sure enough, there's a sudden distinctly electrical sound, the entire hotel going black beneath them, "and I don't think anybody's going to be surprised to have missed you getting loose in that."

Bruce turns, now that he's steady enough on his feet to do so. His eyes are still adjusting to the dark, but he can pick out Clark's figure, the cautiously-managed height and carefully-minimized breadth. And then, gradually, Clark's hair, darker shadow tumbling across his forehead; the topography of nose, mouth, chin; the eyes.

"Hey," Clark says.

Does he remember what it's like, to not be able to see? He must have registered the process the first few times it happened to him in the kryptonite room, if only for the novelty of it—shutting off the lights and discovering what a difference it made, when you couldn't still see perfectly anyway. Is he thinking of that? Or does it just look to him like Bruce is standing here staring at him, drinking him in?

(Isn't that what Bruce _is_ doing, now that the dark isn't so impenetrable?)

"Hey," Bruce echoes, dry, raising an eyebrow—and even with feeble human eyes, he can see the way Clark grins at him. "Wasn't expecting to see you tonight."

He only just catches himself before he can grimace. That was too much, too telling, because Clark can't have failed to notice that Bruce has made himself scarce.

And, sure enough, Clark's mouth quirks. "Yeah," he says wryly, "I bet you weren't. Weren't expecting those guys to show up either. Not exactly batting a thousand—no pun intended."

And that does make Bruce flinch, the barest uncontrollable spasm.

But Clark doesn't press the advantage. Bruce makes himself look up, and Clark is—Clark is looking back, any sign of amusement gone, face sober and eyes dark. "Hey," Clark says again, softly, and steps in close; and Bruce has neither the will nor the wherewithal to knock away the hand he settles against Bruce's jaw. The other comes up, too, but not to the other side of Bruce's throat—higher, the backs of Clark's fingers sweeping over his temple.

Where the gun was.

"I'm glad you're okay," Clark says, very low. "I'm glad I could—help."

Bruce draws in a slow breath, and discovers with a distant sense of consternation that he can't quite manage to look away. "I suppose it would be a little glib to say that so am I?"

And that gets him the smile back. "A little," Clark agrees. "But you're like that sometimes. I won't hold it against you." And then, with half a laugh, "Mind if I walk you home?"

"Will you carry my books?" Bruce murmurs, and braces himself as best he can against what he knows is coming: the grin, the crinkling at the corners of the eyes, and the steady warm grip Clark crowds him in with before they take off.

 

 

*

 

 

It can hardly be called a surprise. Clark carries him back to the lake house, they're pressed together and holding onto each other; it's dark, late; Bruce at least is still processing the physiological effects of a near miss, and Clark—

Clark saved his life.

Admittedly, it's something of a deviation from their established pattern. This started out as a way for Clark to exorcise a few of his demons, or at least keep them at bay for a little while. The first time, Clark had been angry; the second time, half-wild with something a little closer to despair.

But exhilaration can have rough edges of its own. There's no real reason why this time should be dissimilar, at least in its general outlines.

So when Clark brings them down on the roof of the lake house, settles them in place but doesn't let go of Bruce, looking at him with wide dark eyes—Bruce doesn't hesitate.

(Talking is so much more difficult. This? He can do this.)

He leans in, presses a thigh between Clark's, and sure enough, Clark's hardening rapidly. Bruce knows how to handle that.

Clark hadn't wanted to draw attention to himself—there's no sign of the suit, only his usual button-down and jeans, and the flight has conveniently rucked him up, tugged the shirt halfway out of his waistband. Bruce jostles him a little, pulling it the rest of the way, and then raises an eyebrow, half a challenge, and repeats the sequence of sharp jerks that had worked so well on Clark's belt that very first time, taking no pains whatsoever to keep his hands from brushing against Clark's cock as he does.

And there's no wall to shove him against up here, but he's expecting something reasonably in line with their previous encounters. What's happened since the last one that could move the needle, so to speak? Hardly anything, surely. Bruce was callous, distant, reminded Clark exactly who he was dealing with and then walked away from him—in short, nothing that might serve to change how Clark feels about him.

Which is precisely why this feels so manageable, so bearable: it can be predicted, prepared for. Bruce feels calmer already, settling into a lightweight strategic mindset; not Batman's, that would be entirely disproportionate, but he's thinking ahead even as Clark's belt hisses free of its loops, even as he eases a hand at last inside Clark's waistband—

And then Clark says—bright, amused—"Up here, really?" and laughs, catches Bruce's face in one hand and tilts it around and kisses him.

_Kisses_ him. For a moment, it's all Bruce can do to wrap a hand around Clark's wrist and hold on; Clark's mouth is—

(he hadn't thought he'd ever get to—that Clark would ever want to—)

—and then he catches himself and breaks away, takes a quick and necessary step back. His fingers are still hooked in Clark's jeans, because—because he doesn't want to give Clark the wrong impression, that he's angry or upset or unwilling to continue. But he can't—Clark is about to make a mistake that isn't worth making.

"Bruce?"

"Clark," Bruce says evenly.

Clark's frowning at him, but not—not angrily. He mostly looks confused. "Sorry," he says. "Did you—do you not want me to—?"

What an irrelevant question. Bruce ignores it. "Seems like you've got the wrong idea," he says, in a carefully-chosen tone that suggests it's an easy mistake to make. No problem. Could happen to anyone.

Clark narrows his eyes. "Really."

"Whatever it is you think has been happening here," Bruce begins, but Clark doesn't let him get any further.

"Oh, I'll tell you what I think has been happening here," Clark offers, curling one hand around Bruce's at his waist. "I think you tried to murder me once, and I died, and then I came back, and it messed me up. I think you've been doing everything I could possibly have asked you to do and then some to help me figure out how to deal with that. And I think you've been trying pretty hard to keep me from being able to tell that all that messed you up, too."

Bruce doesn't allow himself the slightest flinch or flicker.

"But it did," Clark says softly. "You know how I know?" He matches the step Bruce had taken backwards, bringing them close again, and doesn't look away from Bruce's face. "I know because you'd rather remind me of all the reasons why I should hate you than tell me you wish I didn't."

 

 

* * *

 

 

Bruce is standing perfectly still. His face is blank, his eyes unreadable.

But his hand is warm in Clark's, ever so slightly unsteady. And Clark waits a beat, another, but he doesn't pull it away.

"Bruce," he says, half a warning—but Bruce stares at him and still, still, doesn't move.

So Clark kisses him again, lightly, carefully, and when he _still_ doesn't pull away, Clark goes ahead and reaches for his face again.

He might still run, Clark thinks, and—and if he does, he should at least get the full picture of what it is he's running from. He should at least understand exactly how much Clark means it.

So Clark smooths one thumb along the line of Bruce's jaw, back to the soft skin just under his ear

(is that Bruce shivering, just now? Or Clark?)

and then forward, up, across the prickle of stubble and up to the corner of that flat stubborn mouth. "Bruce," Clark murmurs, and kisses him again, once, twice; runs the backs of his fingers along Bruce's cheekbone, lingers over the sense of the barest imperfection in it just under the eye—he broke it once, Clark suspects, when he was younger. One temple, the brow, and he's so close now that he could probably count Bruce's eyelashes.

And Bruce still hasn't moved away.

Clark swallows, and he can't decide whether or not to hope Bruce can hear it. It's nice to imagine that he seems confident, but—but it might be better, in a different way, if Bruce got that he has no idea what the hell he's doing. That if Bruce doesn't know either, that just means they're on level ground.

"I don't," Clark says aloud. "By the way. Hate you—I don't."

His hand's drifted back down to the side of Bruce's face; he can feel it, when Bruce's jaw tenses up. But when Bruce speaks, his tone's light. "Really."

"Really," Clark agrees, punctuating it with a gentle skim of his fingertips down the side of Bruce's throat—and something flickers across Bruce's face, there and gone.

"You deserve better," he says, very quietly.

"And you deserve better than somebody who threw you through a wall," Clark says. "Bruce, you aren't the only person on this roof who's—who's been ugly, who's done the wrong thing and not figured it out until it was too late. But—"

He stops, because he doesn't quite know how to say it, how to explain that that only makes him more sure. They've been awful to each other, hurt each other, but they've learned how to get past it, too—how to forgive each other, how to be careful. How to be kind to each other. And maybe to themselves, at least a little bit.

"But that's okay," he tries. "And we probably can't do any worse than that, right?"

Bruce raises a skeptical eyebrow; but Clark can see the corner of his mouth twitching. "That's no reason to think we'll be able to do any better."

Clark shrugs, and then lets himself smile at Bruce exactly the way he wants to—slow and bright, unstoppable. "So let's try it and find out," he murmurs.

Bruce is still holding himself at the barest little distance, tentative and cautious. But his hand has softened under Clark's, his shoulders easing when Clark's other arm settles around them. And this time, at last, when Clark kisses him, he kisses back: deep and hard and wistful, like maybe he always wanted to after all.

 

 

*

 

 

Clark wakes up in the middle of the night with Bruce's arm around him, Bruce's nose against his neck, Bruce's ankles tangled with his—and light blazing underneath his skin.

For an instant, his heart's in his throat. He was doing so well, they both were, and if he hurts Bruce now, after everything—

But that strange crackling sensation doesn't get any worse, doesn't ratchet up into disaster. Clark closes his eyes and takes a careful even breath, and then looks down at himself.

It's there, that sharp white light, in bursts—but inside him. Flaring up inside one hand, the other, in a sparkling trail of volleys across his chest; brilliant but muted, distant, like a receding storm.

He falls back asleep smiling.

In the morning, the first thing he does is tell Bruce—and the second thing he does is steal Bruce's phone. He starts dialing; and then partway through, the phone autofills the rest and suggests that he might be trying to call Martha Kent.

He blinks down at it thoughtfully, and then swipes to say he is.

Two rings, and Mom picks up. She must have remembered to actually check the caller ID the way he's always telling her to, because her tone is mild and polite, prepared for a stranger, when she says, "Hello?"

Clark's throat tightens up so much he can't say anything for a second. But he waits it out and then says, "Hey, Mom," and his voice hardly even cracks.

She gasps. " _Clark_ ," she says, with a hiccupy almost-laugh. "Clark, oh—are you all right?"

Clark grins into the phone and then laughs himself, just for sheer gladness. "Yeah, Mom, I am." And then, remembering why he's calling, "I mean, mostly. That thing I was having trouble with, it's—it hasn't quite cleared up yet. But I think it will soon. I should stay here long enough to make sure, but I wanted you to know."

"Oh, Clark, honey," Mom says, "I'm so glad. And you're feeling better, too?"

"Yeah," Clark agrees gently. "I'm feeling better."

He startles a little at a touch to his shoulder—Bruce. By the gesture he makes, the nod he aims toward the door, he's only intending to let Clark know that he's leaving the room. But Clark looks at him and then, following a sudden surge of impulse, catches his hand and hangs on.

"—and he was very thorough and all, with his updates," Mom is saying, "but it just wasn't the same as getting to talk to you, sweetheart."

"I know, Mom," Clark says. "I'm sorry, I just—I wasn't up to it."

"I understand," Mom says softly. "It's good to hear from you, that's all."

"You too," Clark murmurs, and then he clears his throat a little and tugs on Bruce's hand. "And Mom—Mom, you remember my friend?"

Bruce stiffens instantly; but Clark's got a good grip on his wrist now, and he's not giving it up.

"Your friend," Mom repeats slowly.

"The friend I sent to help you out?"

"Oh, your _friend_. Your—cape friend."

"Yeah, yes. My cape friend."

"Of course," she agrees. "Of course, yes. Is that who's been helping you? That Alfred fellow would tell me anything I wanted to know about you, but he never spilled a word about where you were, or who he was working for."

"Yeah," Clark says, "it was him. I've actually got him right here—"

"Clark," Bruce says, in a grim, resigned sort of way; because Clark's already started to move the phone away from his ear, and Bruce can hear Mom almost as well as Clark can.

"Really? I'd like to thank him properly, if that's all right. I know his privacy's very important to him."

And then she falls silent, expectant, and Clark wiggles the phone a little.

Bruce looks at it and then at Clark, firms his jaw, and reluctantly takes it. "Hello, Mrs. Kent," he says into it, and Clark doesn't even have to kick him to get him to do it.

"Hello, Clark's cape friend," Mom says, unhesitating, and Clark lies back on Bruce's bed, covered in sunlight, and laughs until he cries.

 

 


End file.
